The Blame Game
by AmandaFriend
Summary: Who's to blame for a messy relationship? Booth takes aim at those he thinks are messing with his love. Okay, it's the wrong love, but he'll figure out who is really to blame for being with the wrong person. Follows "The White Tiger and the Scorpion."
1. Parker's question

**The Blame Game**

_**Disclaimer: **__Don't own Bones except my own. _

_**Author's note: **__ A follow-up to "The White Tiger and the Scorpion." That piece explores how Booth and Brennan would deal with their time apart in the wilds of Asia. It's mostly angst and deals slightly with the dreaded third party that we're likely to get this fall. Brennan comes to her epiphany, but Booth has already made a move on another woman. _

_This is meant to be a breezier kind of story. More humor, less angst. In this story, they become a couple. But first, Booth has to divest himself of the significant other and Brennan has to step it up. Isn't as easy as you think. _

_Who's to blame for this dysfunctional couple? Ah, that's the name of the game. . . ._

By all rights he could put the blame on Parker.

Well, Parker's question really. Out of the mouth of babes and all that.

There was something satisfying about the routine of picking up Parker from his school and driving him to the Jeffersonian for the after-school science class there. Routine in the real world was so different from the regimentation of the Army. He appreciated that. He appreciated being able to deviate from the plan when he felt like it. Go pick up humongous shakes before Max Keenan put his son through his paces. Go swing by the batting cages. Go take in a movie.

The tumblers had finally clicked on the cosmic slot machine and had come up all cherries. He was engaged to be married. He was finally through with the Army. He was back in D.C. solving murders. He had erased the awkwardness with Bones. He had his life and a rosy future.

And he had that question. That damned question.

They had just pulled out of the pick up lane at Parker's school when his son hit him with the question.

"Dad, can you be in love with two people at the same time?"

Five months back from Afghanistan and with Halloween around the corner, Parker's question hit him like a bad case of trick vs. treat.

On the surface he knew Parker could mean anything, but it still stung like a piece of shrapnel. "What?" He steadied his hands on the steering wheel and checked for traffic on the road ahead before twisting his head toward his son. "Where'd you get that question?"

"No where."

"You mean how I love you and I love Pops?"

"No." His son had developed a penchant for long pauses. Seeley Booth hated those long pauses. "I mean how you love Carrie and how you love Bones."

If the original question had been shrapnel, this twist might qualify as a roadside bomb.

He swallowed, studied his son out of the corner of his eye, and swallowed again.

Three months into a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan, he had met Carrie Ann Schneider in the mess hall on base when she was trolling for interview subjects for one of the wire services. Not quite love at first sight, but she had grown on him and he on her and one thing led to another. Bones had pissed him off only once when she referred to his description as a romantic cliché, but he had to admit that she had been supportive overall. Bones had made his transition back into civilian life fairly easy as well as his return to the FBI and save beyond the remark about romance and clichés, she had done and said nothing that had indicated her disapproval of Carrie.

She'd been easy.

But somehow the question Parker asked was hard. Very hard.

"Parker," he tried to muster up his best, 'I am your father, and I know stuff' voice to put the question to rest, "I am going to marry Carrie. That's how much I love her. She's going to be our family, Bub. Yours and mine."

Yet Parker just wouldn't let it go. "But you also love Bones, Dad. Don't you?"

"Well," he found himself sputtering, "I love Carrie and we're going to get married. I love your mother." He had just created a detour with a dip in the road. _How did he say this? _"I love Bones like a partner. A friend."

Times like this he wished that Rebecca approved of Gameboys and iPods and cell phones for 11-year-old boys because he wanted the distraction of an electronic babysitter from the conversation he was having with his son.

He shifted in the seat.

"Is Carrie your friend?"

"What?" The word erupted out of him. "Parker, why. . . where. . . yeah, Carrie is my friend."

"So, it's okay to like marry a friend?"

Booth looked around wondering if he could locate an Apple store along the route and distract Parker from this line of questions.

"Yeah. It's more than okay to marry a friend." They were friends. Yes, he and Carrie were friends. He hadn't given it much thought. "It's probably better to marry someone who is also your friend."

He congratulated himself on his answer.

"But aren't you like best friends with Bones? Why couldn't you marry her?"

_Where was Gordon Gordon when you needed him? _ Booth looked up to heaven wondering who was the saint for impossible questions. He took a deep breath and dove back in.

"Dr. Brennan and I are friends. We're good friends, Bub."

Here came that long pause again. Booth tried to collect his thoughts. His relationship with Carrie had been easy. She was fun and sassy and had seemed to fit into his life easily. No complications.

Bones, on the other hand, was. . . hell, she was still an integral part of his life. She was his partner, for God's sake, and she was. . . . He buried that thought. He had buried almost all the thoughts of Brennan while he was in Afghanistan because to think of her there had been too difficult. He'd just had to let some things go here as well. Carrie had come along and had loved him and it had been easy to be in love. Easy to ask her to move in. Easy to ask her to marry him. No anthropological warnings about the antiquated nature of this, that or the other thing.

Carrie believed in God, love and apple pie.

And him.

Three, no, four cherries in a row. One quarter would earn him ten.

_Why the hell was he thinking about a slot machine? _

He'd resumed his partnership with Bones with almost none of the awkwardness they had had before their little detours. A year apart had done the trick.

He pulled the SUV into the parking garage and showed the attendant his pass. Parker had been quiet for several blocks and he glanced at him. His son's face was a study in, well, study. Since he'd been back from Afghanistan, Booth had noticed that Parker tended to get _that_ very serious look on his face when he was deep in thought.

He was almost afraid to ask what he was thinking about.

"Dad," Parker had also adopted a certain tone that told Booth he wouldn't like the next thing out of his son's mouth, "you never really answered my question."

He groaned. "You've asked a lot of questions, Parker. What question didn't I answer?"

Dr. Sweets had advised him to be upfront and honest with Parker, so he was preparing himself. Of course, Sweets had told him to do that regarding his time in Afghanistan. He'd been as upfront and honest with his son as he could be given that he'd woken up both of them one Sunday morning with one of his nightmares. Carrie had been on assignment in New York covering a conference, but she wasn't very good with such things anyway. Mostly she turned over and went back to sleep. Booth had been frightened and frightening and totally unable to comfort his own son much less himself.

Bones had saved him. He'd taken Parker to Bones' office later that morning after church and tried to park him there while his partner updated him about the Shepherd case. He saw that his "upfront and honest" had been as effective as carrying water in a sieve. So she saved him. Saved them both. She told Parker about her own nightmares. It had surprised him really. He knew she had had nightmares during the Gravedigger case, but their relationship had been so tenuous at that time he hadn't bothered to ask her about them once the trial was over.

She hadn't said much, just that she sometimes had nightmares about her time in foster care, about her parents taking off, about losing Russ. Parker had peppered her with questions then and she'd been upfront and honest. It's how she was.

And she said something, something that had dispelled some of his own night terrors. She said it with that same directness that made her feared by each new crop of grad students. "I believe people make their own history, but they do no make it as they please, Parker. We don't make it under circumstances we chose, but under circumstances that we directly encounter."

"I believe we can accept or reject some of those circumstances and chose which ones control us."

It had helped. Oh, he still figured he'd wake up in a cold sweat some nights, but she let Parker know that nightmares did little else then ruin a good night's rest. Other people got them. They survived.

He'd been grateful; Booth knew Bones didn't easily talk of the ghosts of her past.

So if the subject wasn't Bones, he might have wished for her presence then. If nothing else, she might have been able to draw on something to change the subject. She could talk to Parker although she tended to talk to him with the same intensity and vocabulary she used for everyone. Parker liked how Bones talked to him. Carrie was still having some trouble in that department.

"What's the question, Parker?" He braced himself.

"Can you be in love with two people at the same time?"

"You mean how I love your mother and how I love Carrie?" _He was a trained investigator, damn it, and he could take control of an interview. _

Parker had no intention of letting go. "No. I know you love Mom but you don't want to marry her. I just mean like you love Bones and you love Carrie." The sputtering was back. Full force. He felt his brain freeze. "Like I love Bones and I kind of like Carrie."

"_You kind of like Carrie?"_

Ignoring the other part didn't make it go away. It hung in the air between them.

"Yeah. She's okay. But Bones is cool. She knows everything and she listens to me. She really listens. Carrie kind of listens to me."

He did know a patron saint of patience and he sent a prayer heavenward. "You don't know Carrie as well as you know Bones. When she's home more and you get to know her, then you'll love Carrie just as much, no, more than Bones."

"Maybe," he said, shrugging. Parker was on a roll. He seemed to have perfected that deep-in-thought thing he had going. "But I don't understand why you couldn't just marry Bones."

oOo

Yes, he wanted to blame Parker for the question. The question seemed to cling to him like cheap cologne.

"What's with you, Big Guy?"

Cam seemed to smell it on him.

He'd parked himself outside Angela's office not sure he wanted to interrupt the conversation inside between Angela and Hodgins. Something had shifted since his tour in Afghanistan and sometimes Booth felt decidedly out of the sync with Angela since his return. _Maybe all pregnant women had a thing about rejecting Booth men. _

"Why the face?"

Dr. Camille Saroyan had been his friend for close to twenty years and they'd been through too much together for him to hide.

"Parker."

He immediately got the sympathetic look from a fellow parent. "Is he at that age?"

There were so many ages of children that he had no idea to what age she could be referring. "He just asked me if he could come here and hang out with Max rather than go to the wedding."

In general, he rather liked it when Cam laughed. Right now, not so much.

"Cam, this is serious."

He dropped his voice down low as to not further alert Angela and Hodgins who seemed to have caught Cam's merriment.

"It's that or he'd like to go to Kenny Whiffle's house."

Too late. Cam's laughter was quickly dissolving into tears and he had no advantage over Angela and Hodgins who had broken up their conference to see what had their boss in hysterics.

"This has got to be good," Angela said.

"What gives?" Hodgins added.

Angela rested her hand on her stomach. Hodgins, ever-dutiful, rested his hand on the small of her back.

Booth rather liked seeing Angela pregnant. She seemed content and beautiful and sexy. And pregnant. Very pregnant.

"Parker's considering not attending his father's wedding."

"Is he doing that in protest?"

Well, he rather liked Angela pregnant except when she added in a touch of the snide. He wondered if anything that woman said or did these days wiped the smile off her husband's face.

"It's nothing." Booth craned his neck thinking he might retreat into Bones' office. Or the Autopsy lab. A rotting corpse might have more sympathy.

"I'm sorry, Seeley," Cam offered wiping an eye. "It just struck me as something funny. I thought Parker liked Carrie."

"Yeah, well, he does _like_ her." Parker's question still rattled in his brain. He turned toward Angela. "You had an ID for me?"

The official FBI tone did nothing to quell Angela's hormone-induced disdain for him. "I sent it to your email."

"But I am here. Now. Here." He pointed toward the floor for emphasis.

With a quirk of her head, Angela swept back into her office.

"It's just, well, you know, man. The pregnancy's got Angela's hormones all out of whack."

Hodgins had not stopped grinning since they'd returned from Paris.

"Out of whack?" Booth wondered if the moon was full although he knew that someone, probably Bones, would point out that there wasn't any scientific connection between madness and the moon. "Out of whack?"

"Dude, don't take it personally. Just ride out the moods like you're surfing the Big Sur."

"What? Big Sur? Hang ten? Far out? Dude?" Booth felt transported back to a rerun of "Beach Blanket Bingo." "You want me to bring the suntan lotion, Frankie?"

Even his sarcasm couldn't wipe away the grins on the faces of Cam or Hodgins. Shaking his head, Booth strode into the artist's office. He sent up another prayer for patience. "So who's our guy?"

The big screen came to life and Angela's reconstruction was accompanied by a Department of Motor Vehicles photo as well as other critical information.

"Your wish and all." Angela pressed something on her controller and even more information leaped onto the screen. "You want the whole Gutenberg Bible on this guy or just the Cliff Notes?"

He sighed. "Everything you've got."

"I sent it to your email."

"And I am here. Now. Like now now."

He heard the faint purr of the printer. _Good_.

"So, did you ever wonder why Parker doesn't want to go to your wedding?"

Booth hated that tone. Angela had been using it since he'd returned. "Oh, I don't know, since he's 11 and he thinks slime and digging in the dirt is cooler than wearing a monkey suit." He returned her tone in spades and turned toward her. "I just need an ID. That's all. I don't need your insights on my son."

He'd crossed the line. Hell, they both had.

Angela's hand was on one hip while she controlled his investigation with the other hand. Suddenly the screens went blank. He couldn't hear the printer. Thank God for email.

"Maybe little Booth might know something that big Booth doesn't."

"What? Who are you? The Dalai Lama in drag?"

Okay, now he really had crossed a line. He'd never really seen Angela angry before, but he suddenly felt sorry for Hodgins. Very sorry.

"You should know something but you're so busy thinking you know something that you really don't realize that you don't know something."

He really was going to have to check for a full moon. His head hurt. Angela looked through him and he almost shuddered. "What the. . . . No. Never mind. Never mind." He held up his hands in surrender.

Striding toward the printer, he scooped up the papers there and made a fast retreat from her office.

oOo

After dropping off Parker with Rebecca, he pointed the SUV toward Pops' nursing home and dialed Carrie's number. He'd had enough of the lunacy at the Jeffersonian and he wanted to ditch Parker's nagging question; he simply wanted a friendly voice.

He got her voice mail instead.

Before he could chuck his phone on the passenger seat, it buzzed with Bones' ring tone. He sighed and hoped that Brennan hadn't crossed paths with Angela. He already was pushing almost ten past the speed limit. He had little desire to wrap the SUV around a utility pole.

"We know how Zeck died. Do you want cause of death now?"

The explanation was concise. He whistled. "Hey, I almost understood that, Bones." He actually had. "Jibber jabber and all."

"You've had years of experience and I imagine you've picked up some of the jargon over time."

"Let me get this straight," he said, "the guys' organs were on the wrong side of his body. . . ."

"Situs inversus."

"Yeah, sithlord invertino."

"Situs inversus. In-ver-sus."

He smiled to himself. Now it was her turn to be exasperated. "Sit-with-us reverse order."

Her sigh came in loud and clear over the phone. "The complete name is situs inversus viscerum. It occurs in less than one in every 10,000 births."

"Yeah, inverted position of the internal organs." He could almost imagine her face as she caught that he had been pulling her leg. Good Catholic boys sometimes could impress brainiac scientists. He liked when she made that face. "So it's possible that someone wasn't trying to kill him, but because his organs were inverted. . . . Mmmm. How'd you figure that out?"

"A simple autopsy."

He could have teased her about Cam having found cause of death, but he actually found talking to her to be somewhat soothing. They had slipped back into a comfortable give and take in their conversations since they'd been back. "So do you have time to talk to the brother tomorrow?"

The Gravedigger trial had wrung her out emotionally and now, more than a year later, he tried to frame parts of their investigation as questions, invitations really. While she rarely backed out of any part of their cases these days, he knew that it gave her an out if she needed it. A year apart had taught him he didn't want another year apart.

They negotiated a time and he ventured into personal territory. "Your dad said that you're up for an award? Another trophy for the mantel?"

She sighed. "The International Society for Anthropological Research is presenting me with an award for my part in the Malukan find. It's not a trophy, it's a medal, actually. And my name engraved on a plaque."

Her voice betrayed an emotion he couldn't quite place. "So it's a pretty big deal, eh?"

"Yes, it's a pretty big deal." He still couldn't get a read on her tone. Usually when these things came her way she had the 'I'm-the-best-forensic-scientist-in-the-world' tone, but tonight something was off.

He chose to switch topics.

"Angela's looking like she's ready to pop."

"Pop would not be terribly accurate. . . ."

"I meant she's big. She looks big."

"She's well within the normal. . . ."

He listened to her explanation, the school marm tone classic Brennan. She knew as much as Cam or Angela did about pregnancy, especially this pregnancy, probably read everything available and she'd been designated Hodgins' backup in the birthing classes. Angela might have had a pregnancy glow about her, but it was Brennan who actually beamed with pure happiness for her friend.

He grunted at her last scrap of information and just barely caught the turn-off for the nursing home.

Talk about Angela's pregnancy then turned into a pregnant pause. With Parker, pauses meant trouble as evidenced by this afternoon. With Brennan, he never knew what to expect, especially lately.

"Cam said that Parker isn't going to your wedding."

_Not this again._ He sighed. "He's 11. He'd rather be watching 'The Family Guy' than getting all dressed up."

"He understands this is more than just a family obligation."

He recognized that tone. She sounded worried.

"He's going, Bones." This was not the right person to have this conversation with. "He's going. That's all. Case closed."

There was that pause. He was beginning to hate the silences almost as much as the conversations he was having. "Sweets might say that Parker's reluctance to go might be keyed into his ambivalence about his father getting married." For a woman who hated psychology, she knew too damned much psychology.

"So, we're not going to tell Sweets about this." He trusted her to keep quiet on this one. "Bones, he's 11. He's just getting to know Carrie." The afternoon's conversation replayed in his head. "He likes her." He _likes_ Carrie. Loves Bones. _Damn_.

"Booth, I just mean that," she paused and sighed and started over. "When Russ married Amy, Russ told me that he had to be sure that the girls totally accepted him. If they didn't love him or want him in their lives, he said that there would have been no marriage. He wouldn't have even moved in with Amy."

This was not where he wanted to go with this conversation. "So, you're saying that unless Parker is 100 percent behind this marriage I should say screw it?"

His anger filled in the silence. She might have been organizing her thoughts, finding anthropological analogs to support her position, but all he wanted to do was smash his phone against the dash.

"Yes, I do think Parker's feeling are important here, but please, Booth, hear me out." She was pleading with him. She rarely did that. "Parker has had some major changes in his life in the last year or so. You were gone for a year. He had to adjust to that. You come home and you have a woman, a fiancé, who he has to adjust to."

"You're not telling me anything I don't already know, Bones," he practically barked at her. "He is my son."

"In certain societies, in South Africa, for example, a tribe, the Alegarians, when a single parent decides to remarry, the children of that parent are allowed to participate in the wedding plans. In fact, they are encouraged to organize the ceremony even run it. It's the way in which the children become connected, married as it were, to the new spouse."

She had a point. In fact, she had several points that all added up to one thing.

"You are amazing, Bones." She knew him well. Too well. With a few well-aimed arguments, she could make him see something with new eyes, even when he was stubbornly resisting. "What would I do without you?"

She plowed in. "Haley and Emma wrote something that they read at the ceremony." She paused. "It was very nice. Sweet really."

Booth didn't think that Parker would want to write anything, but suggested he might want to do more than carry a ring. "Parker might want to be my best man." He rather liked the idea.

"He might. He might need to get to know Carrie better, too." Booth released the stranglehold he had on the steering wheel and made the final turn into the parking lot of the nursing home. "Parker's a smart, personable young boy, Booth. Sweets might say he needs time to adjust and to feel he's part of your marriage to Carrie."

"You're actually listening to Sweets?"

Teasing her helped ease him away from saying something that might embarrass her. Or him. He'd been trying to keep to safe ground between them.

He hung up with a promise to bring her breakfast before their morning meeting with their victim's brother. And not for the last time he wondered what he would do without her.

oOo

Seeley Joseph Booth was a trained Army Ranger, a sniper with a deadly shot.

His grandfather, Hank Booth, was deadlier.

"I've got the dog," Hank Booth announced as he laid down the six-six domino. The tile snapped into place against the table with a sickening click completing the loop. "And I win." He clapped his hands then looked up.

"I told you you weren't so big I couldn't still whip your ass!"

Booth sat back and shook his head.

The old man was still deadly in a game of dominoes. A few wizened heads looked up at Pops' announcement and at least one woman blew him a kiss.

Booth grinned and leaned in. "Delores? Or is it someone new this week?"

Hank gave him a decisive shake of his head. "I am a one-woman man, Seeley. All Booth men are one-woman men."

Booth sat back and took a swig of milk. He finally felt appreciated. It had been a long day.

"I can't understand why you didn't bring Temperance."

It just got longer.

He'd been explaining to Pops since he got back from Afghanistan that he was with Carrie. Even brought Carrie by after she accepted his marriage proposal, but Hank just wasn't listening.

"Pops. . . ." He didn't know what words to use to persuade Hank. He was stubborn, opinionated and, well, cantankerous. Booth loved the man dearly, but he was wondering if he shouldn't just elope. He didn't want Hank to raise an objection at the wedding.

"She's not right for you, Seeley."

"Bones?" Now they were making some progress.

"No. That other gal. What was her name?"

"Carrie." He sighed. His headache was returning. "Carrie Schneider."

"I told you about Rebecca, didn't I?" Hank grasped his arm and held it in a grip that still felt like iron. "I'm telling you about this Carrie. There's something that's not quite right about her."

"Pops. . . ." Booth wondered if his son and his grandfather were in cahoots. "I'm going to marry Carrie. She loves me. I love her."

"Temperance loves you."

There it was. If he had believed it, had thought it possible, he might not have gone to Afghanistan, might not have let Bones go to Indonesia. . . .

"No. No she doesn't."

"The hell you say."

A room filled with people probably used to Hank Booth's booming voice still turned at his pronouncement.

"I told you to follow this." Hank reached across the table and pointed a gnarled finger at his heart. No situs inversus. Hank got it right.

"Pops. I know Bones. I asked her. She doesn't love me. Not like that."

"Oh hell." Hank sat back and grimaced. "She's just scared. She's tough as they come but she's scared. Something frightened her but good, but she'll come around. You'll see. Just got to give her some time."

_Hope and patience._ Booth swept those words from his mind. They had no place there.

Booth leaned in and caught his grandfather's hand in his own. "Carrie and I are going to be married, Pops. I want you there at the wedding. I really do." He saw more than a glimmer of stubbornness in the old man's eyes. "But hear me. Bones doesn't love me. Carrie does. Carrie loves me. And I love her. She wants to make a life with me. And I want that. I want the happily ever after. I want the golden wedding anniversary. I want that Pops."

For more than a moment, the silence hung between them like a challenge. Pops narrowed his eyes, but Booth didn't flinch. He was trained not to flinch.

"You know, Seeley. You deserve that."

Finally. Something had gone right. Booth began to relax. Someone was finally listening to him. To what he had to say.

His grandfather eased back in his chair and gave him one of his long, appraising looks.

"But you could have all that with Temperance."


	2. Jared's mistake

**Author's note: **If you do the math between this story and "The White Tiger and the Scorpion", you may notice that Angela has a gestational period somewhere between that of a horse and a rhino. I apologize for the error.

Good thing Angela's only a character and only pregnant in the story. No one wants me in control of their biological imperatives.

**Chapter 2**

He really wanted to blame Jared.

No. No. No. That was inaccurate.

_He. . . blamed. . . Jared. _

What was it about his younger brother that made him think he had all the answers?

Hell, he hadn't even asked any questions.

Maybe he just didn't know he should have asked a question. Just one question. But this _was_ Jared. Typical Jared. Rush-in-without-thinking-about-the-consequences Jared.

And now standing in Bones' office, the consequences became abundantly clear.

Her lips formed that little pout she had which told him she wasn't comfortable, her emotions had the better of her. She was caught in the middle of another classic Booth boys' struggle and she had lost.

_Damn_.

"Hey, it's okay, Bones. No big deal." While he'd let Jared have an earful later, Booth wanted to set things right with Brennan. Hell, he _had to_ _set things right_ with her. "You go to your awards dinner thingy and we'll have the engagement party." He watched her carefully. She seemed slightly less troubled with his reassurances. Slightly. He could tell she was weighing and measuring everything. "You'll be at the wedding, right? That's what's really important."

Booth knew that Jared knew he'd screwed up, but he didn't really see just how much. "Seeley, I really didn't know Tempe had that awards dinner on the same night we scheduled your engagement party. Really."

And that was the crux of the problem. Brennan was going to be honored for digging up a 3.6 million year old skeleton—a whole tribe of ancient skeletons actually—and had helped confirm that they had walked upright 400,000 years before someone thought man had done that, and she was going to be feted for her work, for her insights into the evolutionary trail. Hell, she should be honored for giving the scientific community unprecedented access to the skeletons. Apparently she had broken new ground there as well. _Time _magazine had just listed her in its top 100 innovative scientists of the decade. _For bones. Really old bones._ And some international group of anthropologists was giving her an award for her work in Maluku.

And thanks to Jared, now no one from the Jeffersonian squint squad would see her receive recognition for her achievements.

"Cam, Angela, Hodgins, they all agreed to go to your engagement party." _She was trying to make this right for him. Hell_. "They know how important it is."

"So, Brian's going to take you to this thingy?" Brian was, well, _okay_. He was a friend of Hodgins. Thank God Brennan hadn't been going out with him for long; he didn't know how he would react the moment she mentioned sex and Brian in the same breath.

"No. My father is escorting me."

"Jeez, Bones, that's like going to your prom with your brother."

He winced. He didn't mean to say that; he really didn't mean to. Booth knew about her prom, knew just how awkward and uncomfortable high school had been for her. He knew that she had few happy memories of that time, hadn't gone to her prom, hadn't been asked. That's why he'd danced with her at her reunion. It was uncomfortable ground, even now, but. . . .

And Jared just stood there, wide-eyed and looking to him to fix this.

But Bones didn't react to Booth's words, not in a way that indicated any discomfort. In fact, she looked a bit confused. "I'm not sure what Russ has to do with this." She was looking at him and at Jared with that look that told him she was trying to piece things together. "My father was very pleased that I had extended him this honor. He's looking forward to it. He even suggested we engage a limousine to take us to the event." Her eyes indicated that she had no idea why having her father as an escort to one of the biggest events of her life was a problem.

It _was _like going to the prom with your brother_._ In the past she would have asked him to take her to these events. But that was before _that night_ and a year apart and Carrie.

Carrie was understanding, very understanding of their partnership and the weird, convoluted path that had found him in Afghanistan and Bones in Indonesia. Carrie had accepted their partnership with no qualms and trusted him. Trusted them.

But saint as she was, she wasn't going to understand him blowing off their engagement party to go see Bones pick up an award.

"Seeley, I'll make this up to you. To both of you. I promise."

He didn't trust his brother to fill a cup much less fulfill one of his promises. "Look, Bones, you really should have Angela and Hodgins. . . ."

"My father will be there. The Whittakers have indicated they might be able to fly in from Australia."

She didn't hide much from him, even now. Doubt had crept in. He could practically taste it. Her voice crackled with it and her eyes held the uncertainty. The Whittakers, whoever they were, weren't going to fly 20+ hours just to see her pick up a medal.

She would be alone.

Escorted by her father.

_Her father. _

_Jeez_.

"And Brian can't take you?"

He had to admit that Brian Curtin was better than being escorted by one's father. The guy _had seemed_ respectful enough at the Jeffersonian children's festival. Of course, Bones had her nieces there, Brian had his daughter, and he had been nearby with Parker and Carrie in case there was a problem.

She shook her head. Obviously, she still didn't seem to think it a problem that Max would take her to pick up her award. "Brian's in London all that week."

The guy was some sort of financial wizling or something. They'd just had the one date—he certainly wasn't going to fly back from London for her.

"Look, Seeley, Tempe said she might be able to get cross town and spend a few minutes at the engagement party before they get into all the speeches and that other hoohah at her thing."

He calculated the distance and traffic at that time of night and shook his head. "That's 40, 45 minutes one way. Look Bones, Carrie will understand. I understand. This is your big night." He glanced at Jared who was just looking at Brennan, their expressions putting to rest any hope that there was an easy solution.

_Damn_.

Booth held Brennan's eyes with his own. She had been supportive of him and Carrie; she hadn't really wavered in that. Brennan might have voiced it as a partner thing, a chance to show just how much she valued his happiness, but it was more. Much more. He could see it in her eyes.

"Angela doesn't want to go to a formal affair in _her condition_," Bones said the last words in a tone that probably mimicked Angela's. The artist's enthusiasm for pregnancy vacillated as she found it more and more difficult to navigate her life feeling like, in her words, "an elephant carrying the Russian army." Brennan had been perplexed by the imagery, but the artist had held firm to her description. "Hodgins goes where Angela goes these days. And Cam's one of your oldest friends, Booth."

The sides had been picked and he got all the players.

_Damn_.

"Padme had asked Carrie if she thought we could do something since you guys aren't planning on a big wedding, and they came up with this engagement party idea." Jared was trying. He was talking fast and trying to avoid any silences that would give Booth time to get a word in edgewise. "Carrie loves the idea. Thought it would be lots of fun. I booked the place and we put down the deposit and the girls thought it was a good date. . . . "

"I get it." Even Bones was nodding her head trying to encourage him to accept the inevitable. "I get it, Jared. You sent out the invitations and everyone's confirmed and blah, blah, blah." Bones still looked uncomfortable, still looked like _she_ had done something wrong. Booth rubbed the back of his neck and just shook his head.

"Padme and I will bring Pops, Seeley. There'll be the guys from the FBI, Frank, uh, that guy from the Rangers, the judge, uh. . . ."

"Artie. . . ."

"Yeah, Artie. Carrie's friends and her family. She's got people flying in for this, Seeley. Her friends from work. Your guys from hockey, their wives, girlfriends, whatever." He didn't dare mention the people from the Jeffersonian. "We'll fill the place, Seeley. You won't know that Tempe's not there."

But that was it, really. He would know.

And Bones would pick up her award with none of her friends from the Jeffersonian to witness her special night.

_Damn_.

Still shaking his head, he also tried to shake the feeling that was creeping up on him. "Yeah, right. Bones will be doing her thing and I'll be doing mine. With Carrie and everyone."

"I'm sorry, Booth." She was still trying to make _him_ feel better. "I'll send my regrets to Carrie."

She was smiling slightly and had that look which meant. . . . _Hell, what did it mean? What did any of this mean? _

"It's just one of those things, big brother. Can't be helped."

"Yeah." He kept his eyes on Brennan. "Can't be helped."

"Knowing Tempe, she'll get another award for something or other and you'll go." Jared had moved closer and clapped him on the shoulder. "But for now, you and Carrie will celebrate your future wedded bliss. We'll pack the place."

oOo

They really did fill the place. He'd never had much in the way of family in the area, never really gave much thought to the number of people in his life, but he had to admit that they managed to fill the hall. The Lincoln Room teemed with wall-to-wall people who had populated or would populate his life. Even Rebecca had turned in an appearance, congratulating him and giving her mock condolences to Carrie before heading out with her latest flavor-of-the-month.

For her part, Carrie had come straight from work, drawing him by the hand as she led him to the hallway leading to the restaurant's kitchen. Only a few people had trickled in by then, so she took the opportunity to set the tone for the evening. There she accosted his lips, wrapping her arms around his middle as he bent to her. For several minutes he could only think about what she was doing to him and wanted nothing more than to become lost in the sensations.

She was delicious and real.

"We could disappear, Mr. Seeley," she whispered when they came up for air, "and I don't know that anyone would miss us."

But he knew she wasn't serious. Carrie loved the idea of the party, loved the thought of merging families and friends. She'd been gracious with Brennan, offered up congratulations in the same breath as commiserations about how unlucky it was that the party and the awards ceremony landed on the same night. She even nodded her understanding when Bones dismissed luck and simply assigned the duplication of dates to the confluence of random events.

Unlucky or not, the night belonged to Carrie; she absolutely glowed with happiness. Weaving among the tables hand in hand, they took turns introducing or being introduced. She was in her element collecting names and exchanging anecdotes and playing hostess to their combined good fortunes. Every once in a while, he bent to her and planted a kiss, reminding her of just how much he appreciated her, appreciated her love. And she would squeeze his hand, or draw him to her, or look up at him, her eyes dancing.

Halfway through the evening he lost her to a conversation at a table of her _Journal_ friends while he found himself suddenly adrift. Scanning the room, he sought a comfortable harbor and set course toward the Jeffersonian crew. They'd docked near the washrooms in sympathy, no doubt, for Angela who seemed attached to the woman's restroom with a yoyo string.

"Good party, Seeley," Cam said as she caught his arm and squeezed it. "You could have booked the Jeffersonian ballroom for this crowd."

He had to admit that it touched him to see how many people had turned out to wish him and Carrie well. Caroline Julian had showed up and promptly settled in next to Pops and was probably getting his grandfather to cut loose with a few embarrassing stories that she could use to blackmail him. Dr. Lance Sweets, thank God, was on the other side of the room with members of Carrie's family. Cam had brought Paul who looked to be getting golf pointers from a cabal of duffers. Hodgins, too, had found a group to attach himself to, but he kept glancing back toward Angela, never really letting her out of sight except when she waddled back to the washroom.

There were guys he hadn't seen for years, men he had served with in Desert  
Storm or put in some time with at Quantico or reconnected with since his time in Afghanistan. Carrie and Padme had probably contacted everyone in his address book and thrown in a few from Jared's as well. The place buzzed with talk and laughter and Booth had to admit Jared's heart had been in the right place even if his head had not been.

Cam smiled at him. "So this is what people do when they want a small wedding on New Year's?"

He let out an exasperated groan. "Camille, don't you start, too."

Pops had already grumbled about Carrie's wedding plans. Mostly he just grumbled about him marrying Carrie at all, but had behaved himself in his fiancee's company when they made the rounds. "She wants it all, Cam. The party, the symbolism, and a few well-chosen friends." He had heard Carrie on the phone with a friend in New York planning what sounded like the invasion of Iraq. Their small wedding was turning into something else from the sounds of it. "It's what she wants. A new year, a new start. For both of us."

Cam held her arms across her chest and made that face she did when she was taking in information and mulling it over. "And what do you want?"

He let out a deep breath. He wanted this. The happily ever after with someone who wanted it, too. "I want her to be happy."

And he did.

Cam smiled her I-understand-the-meaning-of life smile. She'd managed to take some of the sting out of Brennan going to the award ceremony without her friends by arranging for several of the interns to lend support at the dinner and by making sure that at least one of the muckety mucks at the Jeffersonian would be on hand. Wendell Bray and Daisy Wick had buzzed with nervousness all week at rounding out Brennan's short list of supporters.

It had been a compromise, sure, but Brennan didn't seem to mind the B-team showing up for her night while he took the A-team for his.

He glanced back at Angela and felt relief that she was deeply ensconced in a conversation with a woman equally as pregnant and did not notice him. He wasn't so sure Angela felt the same as Brennan. "You need to be happy, too, Seeley."

"I am, Camille." He scrunched up his face in an exaggerated smile. "Don't I look happy?"

She laughed and shook her head. "Do that very often and she'll want to end the marriage before it begins."

But he had to admit that he felt uncommonly lucky. The smile he wore that night was genuine and true.

Carrie was a safe bet, a sure thing.

He finally got a winner, he thought. He found a woman who wanted him, wanted _them_ and wanted it in such a way that she would put up with his job and his son and his partner.

Waving toward Paul who seemed to have developed a bad slice with an imaginary club, Booth wove his way through the crowd intent on grabbing a fresh beer when Charlie caught his attention.

"Sorry to see that Dr. Brennan didn't make it."

Even today Brennan had seemed apologetic that she wasn't attending his "special night." He shook his head at the memory. "Yeah, she's picking up her _big award_ tonight."

He hadn't meant to exaggerate _big award_ as he had except to make light of her absence. It did feel odd, unsettling, really, but no stranger than the moment in her office that afternoon when she had interrupted the _National Public Radio_ reporter sent to interview her just so she could offer up words of encouragement to him.

But the junior G-man misread him. "She's probably just sitting back here in the States to collect all the awards that are coming her way, to just sift through the job offers." Charlie had been the seventh person in the building who had shown up in his office this past week with a copy of the _Time_ article, Brennan's photo and story taking up a good half page in the magazine.

"Bones deserves the award." He kept his tone flat, even, as he had with each new face wanting to be the first to show off his partner's success. Something in Charlie's tone made him wary; his words made him curious. "She earned it."

"No, no, I meant that Dr. Brennan, well, she turned down two offers to extend her role in Maluku and she turned down a position with the Egyptian Museum for Antiquities in Cairo just last week. And there's something big coming down the pipeline. . . . "

"What?" The air in the room felt as if it had gone heavy, unbreathable. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, you know State has to vet any high profile Americans offered positions overseas and because Dr. Brennan works with you and the FBI it got kicked to us and then to me. . . ."

"No." He realized he was gripping the back of a chair when he felt something crack beneath his fingers. "What do you mean she turned down a chance to extend her time at the Maluku find?"

Charlie looked incredibly nervous. "I take it she didn't tell you."

Booth shook his head. He hadn't asked and she hadn't offered details about Maluku. It was as if they had both silently agreed to ignore the awkward patches in their past and the year apart and move forward. He took a step toward Charlie. "What didn't she tell me, Charlie?"

The shorter man visibly gulped. "They asked her to extend her time there. Once fairly early on, I believe in the second or third month. Then about two thirds of the way through. I can tell you the exact timeline tomorrow if you'd like."

"And Egypt?"

"Very prestigious position with the museum. Very important. She would have been responsible for research over much of the. . . ."

"But she turned it down."

"According to my sources, yes."

Booth felt the heaviness of the air pressing down on him. Brennan was giving up dream assignments? Why? To collect awards? He stared down at Charlie. "Did she give them any reasons?"

Charlie gave one decisive nod of his head. "Yes, but I'm not at liberty to say."

"But I'll just find and read the reports after I pulverize your desk to find them."

The man's face lost color. "She told the Maluku organizers first that it was for personal reasons, then professional reasons and pretty much the same thing on the Egypt thing, eh, offer. Museum offer."

"Personal or professional?"

"Uh, oh I see. Professional." Charlie straightened and took a deep breath. "Do you want the exact wording?"

Booth arched his eyebrows and nodded.

"Well, I don't remember exactly the exact wording but she said, and please don't hold me to this because I don't remember exactly, she said in her email that she felt a professional obligation to the FBI to maintain the relationship between it and the Jeffersonian."

He couldn't really say why, but he felt a surge of relief and something else. Something undefinable. Something was crawling around in his chest and he wasn't sure what it was.

"There's more, Agent Booth, and if you give me a moment here I might. . . ."

Booth had had enough. He needed a drink to quell that something trying to take root in his chest. He patted the man on his shoulder. "No, no, that's enough, Charlie. Good to know."

Somehow he made it to the bar and ordered a whiskey. It hadn't occurred to him that Brennan's anthropological star had ascended so high to where her services would be in such demand. _Egypt_? Dr. Goodman had once told him that museums in the Middle East tended toward seeking homegrown talent to head up their studies. He never imagined they'd seek out an American and a woman at that.

"Hey, you ought to go easy on that stuff." Jared gave him a grin and a soft jab in his shoulder. His brother was carrying a couple of bottles of water. He still checked his brother for alcohol like he was under age or something. "And don't look so unhappy. You're getting married, not going to a funeral."

Booth ignored his brother's advice and ordered another, then caught sight of Carrie weaving her way toward him. He pasted on a smile and glanced at his watch.

_Bones would be receiving her award by now. _

He turned toward Carrie and let her pull him into her arms and bent down to kiss her.

"Oooh, you're hitting the hard stuff, Seeley." She smacked her lips and gave him a playful look before kissing him again. "You ought to leave that to your friends." Her smile was contagious. "Drunken toasts are so much more fun when you're sober and can hold it over them."

oOo

Booth had to admit that drunken or sober, the toasts were fun.

If Brennan had been here, Booth was sure she would have found fault with all of the romantic hyperbole served up. "Madly in love" would have garnered some comment about the insanity of love, "living happily ever after" would have earned a reminder that no one lives forever, and "spending the rest of their married lives together" would have brought out all-too-sobering statistics about the divorce rate.

With Carrie at his side, he could bask in the glow of his friends and family with a woman who believed in marriage and love and romance. A woman who didn't find fault with monogamy or equate everything to anthropological constructs or biological imperatives. Love wasn't a chemical process to her, endorphins and serotonin unleashed for the mere survival of the species, but a feeling that oozed from every pore of one's body and informed one's life.

Even if it wasn't scientifically possible, he didn't care. It's what he wanted.

"I just want to say," said Jared, his Perrier bottle held aloft as he offered up one of the last toasts of the evening, "that my big brother has taught me a great deal which," Padme absolutely beamed at his younger brother, " as his younger brother, I really hate to admit."

"When I was 13 I asked him what it felt like to be in love. I had just met a pretty little thing who I was sure was the love of my life." He bent toward Padme and placed a kiss on her head. "Remember, I was 13 and not as smart as I am now."

He laughed with the rest of their guests and held Carrie tighter.

"My brother said that love is one of those things you just know. You know you want to be the best person you can be for the other person. You sacrifice for them, put them before all else. They are the person you think of at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day."

"My brother said that love is about the power of infinite possibilities. I personally think he was talking about sex," Jared paused at the burst of laughter, and his eyes seemed to focus on something in the distance, "but if he wasn't, and knowing Seeley, he wasn't, I'd like to wish Seeley and the woman he loves that power, that power of infinite possibilities."

Amid murmurs of approval and applause, Booth kissed Carrie then drew Jared into a hug.

Pulling away from Jared, he caught something in the room that didn't quite fit.

Standing near the back, looking like they had come from a formal White House dinner, Bones stood with her father.

And she was, in a word, . . . .

"Stunning," he heard someone say.

And she was. Max certainly was no slouch in a tuxedo that he wore with the ease of a movie star, but Brennan, dressed in a deep purple gown that reached the ground while gently hugging her curves along the way, seemed almost like a dream.

"Bones?" Conversations around them stopped, then started again in small waves as she made her way through the crowd with her father.

"We can't stay long, we've got a taxi outside," Max announced. "And I probably shouldn't say this in a room that's filled with law enforcement types, but we broke just about every traffic law to get here."

"What are you doing here? What about your award?"

Brennan quirked her lips. "Miss Wick was an integral part of the Malukan find. . . ."

". . .And to make a long story short," Max interrupted, "her job was to make a short story long while we made our getaway."

Angela had long since left her anchor by the washroom and now stood next to Brennan, holding onto her arm. Hodgins hovered nearby.

"Since this isn't technically an engagement party but meant to be a celebration of your engagement," Brennan talked with that studied way she did as if she were carefully checking each word for accuracy, "I was at a loss as to what words would be best to convey the proper sentiments on this occasion."

"Don't go turning this into one of your novels, Tempe," her father muttered, glancing at his watch. "The meter's running and your brother Russ is much better at fixing motors than making speeches."

With a look at her father, Brennan reset herself. She was going for perfection. "I wanted to express my sincerest wishes for a happy. . . ."

". . . Blending of familial obligations as well as a monetary and property consolidation," Angela supplied and squeezed her arm. "We know, Sweetie, we know."

Booth exchanged a smile with Hodgins. Carrie, Jared and Padme just looked confused.

oOo

Thanks to Max, he and his daughter were in and out of the party in no more than ten minutes. The Brennans' sudden appearance lingered in the room even as many of the guests drifted away after saying their goodnights.

In the end, Bones' words had been simple: "You deserve only the best. And that is what I want for you: happiness, love, laughter, health and many, many sunrises."

Her words touched him deeply as did her mad dash across town in which to deliver them.

Even Max Brennan, the ultimate master of the con game turned into master of the sincere: "I know Tempe doesn't believe, no empirical evidence and all that, but I want you to know that true love endures. If it's true love, that person becomes part of who you are. And you become part of them. And you know, it'll last as long as you're around to remember."

oOo

His beer had gone warm by the time he and Carrie had said good night to most of their guests. He considered making one last trek to the bar when Caroline Julian caught him and pulled him into a hug. "You sure about all this, Cherie?" the prosecutor asked, her eyes boring into him as if he were a witness on the stand. "You ready to give up the life of take out for dinner and watching TV in your underwear for happily ever after and all that folderol?"

To his nod she simply arched her eyebrows and shrugged. "Well, I hope the three of you will be very happy together."

oOo

Outside the restaurant, the coolness of the October night provided a gentle contrast to the warmth within. He could still hear a few of the partygoers in conversation near their cars in the parking lot, their talk muted by distance and the night air.

Carrie had paired off with a cousin from New York several cars away and the two women seemed engrossed in a conversation punctuated here and there by a slight trills of laughter.

Booth let the coolness take the edge off the heat he was feeling and allowed himself to look upward.

Few stars shone brightly enough to fight the effects of the city lights, but he could see the moon, large and gray, looking like it was in motion. He knew it was only an illusion, the effect of clouds moving in front of it. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.

"We're going to take off, Seeley," said Jared. "We'll take Pops with us tonight and see that he gets back tomorrow."

He thanked his brother again for the party and pulled him into a hug.

"It was a good night, Seeley."

"Yeah." He smiled and clasped his brother's shoulder. "You made it a good night, Jared."

"And Tempe came out. She made it. She came all the way out here for you."

He nodded. He couldn't imagine how she'd managed. Probably a tip worthy of Fort Knox. "We're partners. That's what we do."

He felt the heat of his brother's eyes on him. Carrie was slowly making her way back to him, turning and waving toward someone as she did.

"Seeley, hell, you're the one who's usually offering up something I don't want."

"Brotherly advice." He'd heard enough advice tonight for several marriages. Even something from Jared seemed fine given how mellowed out he felt. "Hit me with it."

"Be serious, Seeley. Just be serious about this. That woman," he pointed his head toward Carrie, "is very serious about this."


	3. Booth's insights

**Booth's insights**

**Author's note: **Thank you to everyone who has read this story and anything else I've written. Enjoy.

_It was all about balance. Balance and a steady hand._

_Eye and hand co-ordinated. . . . Line it up. . . . Keep steady. . . .Don't move. . . . Keep the line. . . . Straight line. . . . Steady. . . .Steady. . . .Stea. . . ._

"Agent Booth?"

The small stress ball he'd been balancing on the tip of his finger fell to the arm of the chair, bounced onto the table and then made a swan dive onto the floor only to roll under Sweets' chair.

Glancing at Brennan, he noticed a mere ghost of a smile.

"It's a very simple question, really." Sweets steepled his fingers and looked over them, his eyes boring into his own, a hint of disapproval in his voice. Booth deliberately did not break from the eye contact despite a keen desire to check his watch again. "You're both very accomplished, very intelligent professionals who are constantly checking and re-checking your work. I simply want you to do the same thing with your lives. By sharing some of the insights that you have come see just how far each of you has come."

He always wondered why therapy could be anything but therapeutic.

Oh, he really couldn't blame Sweets; it was his role within their little family. Poke and prod and unearth insights into the human condition. _Keep the finger on the pulse of their little crime-fighting unit and keep it going strong. _

"Insights?" Booth glanced to his left. Next to him, the ever-sphinx-like Temperance Brennan did not react to Sweets' latest query.

"Yes, insights. There've been a lot of changes in your lives. You were apart for a year in Afghanistan and Indonesia. You're getting married, now, Agent Booth," Sweets was on a roll now, listing the obvious. "Angela's had her baby and you're both the godparents. You might have some feelings about one of those or all of those events, none of which could be considered less than life-altering." The young psychologist sat back, spread his hands out as if in invitation. "Insights."

That's one of the things he really hated about Sweets. The guy almost knew, _just knew_, what _not to talk about_ and yet wanted to talk about it anyway. He didn't mind when his insights helped put away the bad guys, but he really hated it when Sweets wanted to scrounge around in their heads.

Booth suppressed the sigh and just held steady eye contact with Sweets. If Brennan could wait him out, so could he. She was the master of silence, but he, Seeley Joseph Booth, could wait out Sweets with the best of them. _Steady….Steady….Hold that line…. Hold it….See who would give in first…_

Once, long before Afghanistan or Indonesia or everything else that Sweets wanted insights on, he had thought of these sessions as a kind of tag team wrestling. He was sure Brennan wouldn't understand the sports reference, but it didn't matter. She was his partner and she knew, _just knew_, how to play the game.

Sweets was good, he really was; they were just better.

Somehow they had managed over the years to have some of their most meaningful discussions outside of Sweets' office, outside of his "truth zone." And now was not the place to bring up what he needed to bring up with Brennan. Sweets' office was no place for the "truth."

At least not today.

So he sat in the silence even though it was killing him. _Steady…. Steady…. You can wait him out…. Bones is good at this…. She's probably writing her next novel in her head…. Or reconstructing a skeleton upside down with her eyes closed…. Or coming up with new places to disappear to…._

That was the crux of it, the real reason he was anxious to be out of here and go anywhere they could discuss this new wrinkle. Privately.

"C'mon guys, I'm sure that one of you came away from your experiences overseas with some kind of insights into your lives." If he was dying of boredom, Sweets was dying of frustration. "Or, you could share some of your insights regarding things that are going on in your lives now."

Silence was preferable to insights, but _he. . . really. . . hated. . . the. . . silence. _

He thought of sports scores. The latest betting pool at the office he wasn't supposed to be in on, but he'd relented and bet anyway. The fact that Carrie had been hedging on when she wanted to start having children. The case that they were working.

And none produced insights on how to get Sweets to stop looking at him like he had any insights he wanted to offer.

Oh, he wanted some insights from Brennan, wanted to know what _she_ was thinking. What her latest decision was going to do to them. To their partnership.

"It really isn't that hard, Agent Booth, Dr. Brennan. This is about give and take. You both have shared your thoughts on the Westfall case. . . ."

He had insights. Lots of them. Just this morning while he was catching up on his messages, Charlie just had to finish the conversation from the other night, just had to tell him something that, by all rights, he shouldn't know.

Yet he did.

One big secret. In the guise of one beautiful forensic anthropologist.

"Agent Booth? Dr. Brennan?"

What Brennan was about to do would alter their relationship. Change it forever. How could she do that? A year apart had been hard enough; he'd managed just fine, thank you. But what purpose did it serve to go away again?

He stole a look at Brennan. The sphinx. She'd spent hours with Angela at the hospital, hours at the lab, hours upon hours. A tinge of weariness betrayed those long hours around her eyes. Not much else to show she hadn't slept much in the last few days. Probably decided on Egypt without sleeping on _that_ decision.

He shook himself.

"Agent Booth?"

He didn't want to go _there_. He shook his head as if he could rattle something loose and give Sweets something. Anything. "Ahh. I discovered I don't much like deserts."

He really tried to give his insight some weight with the gravity of his tone, but Sweets knew its value.

"Good to know, Agent Booth. Probably valuable information if you're planning a vacation."

He checked his reaction—Sweets was more than a little snarky with his tone. _Okay,_ _tag. . . your turn, Bones. _

"I much prefer jungles." _Thatta girl._ He waited.

Sweets waited.

She said nothing more.

_That's it?_

She _did_ look tired. He glanced at his watch.

Just like this session, the minute hand was moving at the speed of a glacier.

He didn't think he liked that, either.

He hated the silence, but Sweets apparently hated it more. "Well, our preferences for geographical locales for work or pleasure or both can speak to our need. . . ."

When Sweets wound up he could pitch for several minutes.

She _did_ look exhausted. The Westfall case kept doubling back on itself which had forced her back into the lab to check the work of the latest intern of the week. He knew she'd been _at that_ all last night.

_Insights. _He tried to push all thoughts of Egypt from his mind. It wouldn't do to bring it up here.

He pushed his thoughts to more neutral territory. _Hodgins had been so excited about the baby….Cute kid; real cute…. Adorable, but with Angela as a mother, what else would you expect?... Angela couldn't actually hate him if she wanted him to be the godfather…. Godfather….Marlon Brando. James Caan….'You talking to me?' …. Nope, wrong movie…. Who else was in that movie? …. The other guy. Pacino….Who else? ….Bones had looked beautiful, so right holding that kid…. Adorable, really …. Even Cam looked like she might crack and want one …. Carrie was talking about someday…. Someday…. At least two years from now…. Parker's little brother…. Or sister…. One of each…._

". . . It's interesting that you've both chosen Washington, the nation's capital, for all of its symbolism and history, as your home base as it were." Sweets was winding down. "So, what are your thoughts, Agent Booth? Dr. Brennan?"

_Tag team…. You're it._ He looked at Brennan.

But she looked like she wasn't going to move or say anything. Sweets was good; Brennan was the master. She could sit there for hours saying nothing. She could be unreadable. Damned inscrutable.

Like today.

Most of the time he didn't care. Shouldn't care. Shouldn't care about Egypt. Brennan had her life, he had his. She had her bones, he had Carrie.

_C'mon, Brennan, tell him something so we can get out of here. So I can ask you about Egypt._

Sweets sighed. It was possibly a 14-sigh session. Booth recalled that they got the good doctor's sigh total up to 21 once.

_That had been a good session._

"Insights?" Sweets repeated.

He had that look today that he sometimes had, the look of a teacher about to scold them and tell them he wouldn't let them out for recess unless they did their work.

"I had an insight." Brennan had finally broken silence. He looked at her trying not to show gratitude but let her know he was grateful nonetheless. _Tell him so we can get out of here and I can get your insights on Egypt. _"Several, actually."

"Now the insight we're looking for is one regarding your personal life."

_Of course._

"Of course."

_This ought to be good. _

"My brother suggested that I try to do one thing every day that was contrary to what I might do under normal circumstances," Brennan began, her words measured and meted out carefully. He expected a classic Brennan deflection in which the anthropologist would talk and talk until Sweets surrendered and called time on their session. This was surprising Bones, not quite Brennan-who-wants-a-baby Bones, but still slightly out of character for her. "Rather than try to do the rational thing, I should consider doing something entirely irrational," she said. "As kind of a scientific inquiry."

_Huh?_ _She's listening to Russ? Russ?_

"How'd that go?"

It sounded somewhat sarcastic when he said it. Sweets only gave him a glance.

"Angela said it sounded like a good idea. . . ."

He made a sound. _I must have made a sound. _They were both looking at him.

Sweets wasn't about to let something like this go. "I think it's admirable that Dr. Brennan would try something that is certainly not strictly. . . ," he paused, looking for the right word, ". . . rational."

"I found that it was difficult, especially at first."

"A new skill is always difficult at first, Dr. Brennan." Sweets was being encouraging.

_A new country is always difficult at first. _Even in his head the tone came off as snide.

_Definitely not encouraging. _

As Brennan explained what she was doing, who she had tried her irrational actions on, it sounded both intriguing and just plain weird coming from her. Certainly most people went about their day doing both the rational and the irrational without a second thought. For Brennan, the fact that she had to really think about each action, determine what to do and how to do it and then do it was an insight into her thinking processes. While Brennan clearly was the intellect in her family, clearly unparalleled in her brilliance, there was a certain genius in suggesting she branch out and try something irrational every once in a while. _Hell, he'd been trying to get her to do that for all the years he'd known her. Why is she listening to Russ now?_

He glanced at his watch. _Good girl_. Time was flowing quickly now and the session would be over soon and he could ask Brennan about Egypt in the comfort and privacy of his office or the elevator or the SUV. _Time to hurry this along. _He waited for an opening. When it presented itself, he jumped in.

And missed.

"I've been trying to get you to act more normal for years." Something was just off in his tone and he couldn't quite straighten it out. "And Russ? You're listening to Russ all of a sudden? I can understand Angela, but Russ?"

Sweets shot him a look—_no dessert for you, young man._ Booth sat back and tried to still his mind.

She shot him a look, too, one he couldn't quite read. "Russ has a broader world view than I do about certain things. . . ." He loved how she could dismiss what sounded like an insult with a bit of Brennian logic.

He had to admit, it was not typical Brennan.

"I'd like to get back to Dr. Brennan's insights, but I'm picking up some tension from you, Agent Booth. And it seems to be directed at Dr. Brennan." Sweets wasn't letting anything by him. "Did something happen between the two of you that I should know about?" Booth raised one hand, a stop sign.

"No, no." Booth shot a look at Brennan and a smile. Her look was definitely quizzical, but leave it to her to not overreact. "I'm simply processing what Dr. Brennan is saying."

_It was the wrong tone. _Even Brennan gave him a look. "It's just that, people aren't scientific experiments for you to observe and catalog and evaluate in your little test tubes and beakers."

Sweets sighed and Booth added it to the total. "People _definitely are_ to be observed and cataloged and evaluated." The young man shifted in his seat and warmed to his argument. "You do it everyday as part of your investigations. I think it is commendable for Dr. Brennan to not only make the effort to be more normal, as you called it, but I think it was very brave of her to make that admission here today."

"Brave?"

"_Brave_, Agent Booth. For someone who is hyper-rational, the act of doing something deliberately irrational is a challenge. You should know that. You have worked with Dr. Brennan for what, almost six years, and you, more than anyone, should know how difficult it can be for her to not only trust her brother's opinion, act on it, and then openly talk about it here."

Sweets smiled and Brennan's expression remained neutral. "All right, Agent Booth. Maybe we'll defer Dr. Brennan's insights for a later time. Perhaps you'd like to give us some insights into how your upcoming marriage might affect your working relationship with Dr. Brennan."

This time Booth could barely suppress his own sigh. _The kid knew what buttons to push._ _Definitely not_ something he wanted to talk about in front of Sweets.

He'd already assured Brennan that there would be no major changes in their working relationship when he asked Carrie to move in. Did the same thing after Carrie accepted his marriage proposal. Sure, they didn't eat late-night dinners except when the job demanded and he rarely saw Brennan outside of work now, but that was to be expected. He had told her that was to be expected.

They were partners. Period.

_It's what she wanted. Partners. That all-important partners thing. _

Again, Brennan was his partner in this, too, and was putting on a façade of control. It was his question to answer, but he didn't want to put it out there for Sweets to dissect. No. Not really.

But both of them were looking at him and he couldn't take that pressure. _Tag. His turn. _

"Our partnership is fine, Sweets. Just fine. We work together. We go home to our separate lives." _There_. "We've still got one of the best solve ratios in the bureau and," a little razzle dazzle could always put off the kid, "we've got the big Finkelstein case next week."

"But are you and Dr. Brennan still very close?" It sounded almost like a plea. "You used to spend a great deal of time together outside of work. I imagine you don't do that anymore."

_Tag. You take it, Bones. _

Brennan pursed her lips, shifted her arms, and refolded her hands in her lap.

_Tag. C'mon, Bones. Reassure the boy. _

She flexed her fingers.

_She had the Switzerland thing going today. Very neutral. Very, very neutral. Reveal nothing. _

"We're still close? Right?" _That _sounded almost like a plea_._ "Right, Bones?"

"We don't talk as much as we used to." She went from Switzerland to being North Korea. _Drop the bomb, why don't you?_ "We talk on the way to and from scenes, but it's mostly about work."

_Jeez, Bones._ "So now Sweets is going to jump on that and say something like, I don't know, how does that make you feel?"

Sweets was smiling. _Damn_. "No, no, Agent Booth. You seem to be doing a good job doing my job." He was handing it off to him. _He was not supposed to be part of their tag team._ "So, how does that make you feel, Agent Booth?"

_Tag, Bones. Tag. It's your turn. Why is Sweets giving it back to me?_

He'd had enough.

"I think it would be more important to find out how Bones' going to Egypt will affect our partnership."

And there it was. The pebble in his shoe. He knew how to push a few buttons, too.

"How did you know?" Brennan was asking, the shock evident. "I just confirmed with them this morning."

"FBI. Special agent. I do this for a living, Bones."

"Egypt? Wow." Sweets was impressed. "What are you going to do in Egypt?"

And she started to tell them. A mummy. Invitation from the government. The woman with the tear inside her heart. Investigate. Evaluate.

His head was hurting. _Become richer and more famous than you are. Move away. Become one of those Egyptian idols. Get a pyramid named after you._

"Wait. Hold on a second." This was getting away from him. "Bones, you haven't answered _my_ question."

Sweets sighed. _He didn't care to add that one to the total. This was serious._ "The Egyptian government doesn't just extend this opportunity to everyone," Sweets said. He leaned forward and Booth knew he was in trouble with the teacher, now. Even Brennan had turned toward him. "This is a great honor."

"Why does her going to Egypt matter to you?"

"Yes, Booth, why?"

"Because in a partnership, major life changes that could affect that partnership should be discussed by said partners."

"Like getting married."

"That's different."

"Like you running background checks on my dates or snooping in my email."

"I didn't snoop in your email."

"You didn't?"

"No."

"Then how did you find out about Egypt?"

"Charlie."

"Charlie?"

"Yeah. State has to investigate this kind of thing, they shot it to the bureau, it trickled down to Char…."

"You always do background checks on her dates, Agent Booth?"

"Can we just stay on point here? You haven't answered my question, Bones. What about Egypt?"

He could read her now.

_She was annoyed. Pissed off. _

_Damn._

"We're partners, Bones." He tried a friendly jab to the arm, but she stiffened at his touch. "Partners."

_Weak. Very weak. _

"This is my career, Booth. This is what I do." When she got all quiet, it was deadly. If Sweets was the school teacher, she was the principal. "As you said, I have my bones. Apparently I have no value beyond that." She sat back and crossed her arms.

"You have value." He could see the hurt in her eyes. And the anger. "It's just that this isn't. . . I thought you weren't going to Egypt. I thought you turned them down like you turned down Maluku."

"How did you know that?" The anger actually radiated from her now. "No. It's probably more Charlie."

A smile wasn't going to cut it. No.

She was going to need time and distance on this one.

_How far was it to Egypt?_

_Damn._

"If this is something that would enhance Dr. Brennan's career, help provide the Egyptian government with some additional insights into how this particular person died, rewrite history as Dr. Brennan said, how can you stand in her way?"

Booth felt his bones go soft. He had as much control as he had on making that ball under Sweets' chair levitate.

"Why does her going to Egypt matter to you?"

oOo

It was the same question Carrie asked that night when he related the news.

"You're just partners, Seeley." She offered him the bowl of beans. "Why should it matter if she goes to Egypt?" She leaned in and smiled.

God, he usually loved that smile, could get lost in that smile, but tonight he just felt lost.

"We work together. _Together_." He piled more beans on his plate than he really wanted. "We can't work together if she's, I don't know, in Egypt."

His tone didn't sound as biting as it had in Sweets' office.

"You've been saying all along how Brennan is in such demand these days. All that Maluku stuff." Carrie speared a tomato and held it aloft. "She's getting all kinds of notice these days. Even my editor was suggesting we do a day in the life of feature on her."

"She _is_ a world-famous forensic anthropologist."

She smiled. "And she likes to remind people of that all the time."

"She didn't even talk it over with me."

"So obviously she doesn't put the same value on your relationship as you do." Carrie was using the speared tomato like a pointer. "She's allowing her need for fame to help her pick and chose her opportunities. She's probably ticked off that you would want to stand in her way."

She _had been angry_ with him, so angry that she had stormed to the elevator and slipped into a waiting car without so much as a look back.

"Odds are," she said, the tomato poised just at her mouth, "she's not going to be your partner much longer." She put her fork down, the tomato still skewered to it. Carrie reached out a hand and held his in hers. "I'm afraid, Seeley, that she's moving on. She sees the handwriting on the wall."

"Handwriting?"

"We're getting married. You're not there all the time for her." She squeezed his hand. "Besides, she's in demand, Seeley. She's got a healthy ego, a need to be the best at everything. She loves being the 'world famous' Temperance Brennan. What anthropologist doesn't want to be invited to go to Egypt and be consulted on an Egyptian mummy? Face it, Seeley. The Jeffersonian just may not be enough anymore to contain her."

oOo

Journalists like Carrie were taught to be objective, to clarify the big picture and to dig for the details to bring every little thing into focus.

In a lot of ways, their jobs, thought Booth, were alike. He was a detective—look at the facts objectively, put together the clues, see the picture.

So what she said at dinner stuck with him that evening and followed him into the bedroom as he idly watched Carrie's night-time rituals.

He hadn't really addressed Sweets' questions during their session. Hadn't really been honest with himself.

His relationship with Carrie _had changed_ things between him and Bones. They were partners, but he couldn't honestly say they were as close as they once were. But they hadn't really been close since that night in Sweets' office. That night had changed things. It hadn't been Carrie or Afghanistan or Indonesia.

They were never going to be able to go back from that night.

He had moved on.

And now, so too, was Brennan.

Carrie smiled at him in the mirror, her eyes dancing with merriment as she brushed her hair.

"You know what I was thinking?" She was wearing that silky thing she wore that hugged her in all the right places.

He chased thoughts of Bones from his head. There was only room for one woman in his bed.

Carrie stood and turned and he couldn't help but whistle. Mostly she wore an old T-shirt to bed and nothing else, but tonight she had made a special effort. Her breasts were accented by the gown; her nipples invited touching; her curves dipped and moaned in all the right places.

With her golden hair and a sashay of her hips, she was offering dessert.

"I was thinking that we should try for a baby right away."

She folded into his arms easily and began an assault on his senses. "Start in Hawaii at least. On our honeymoon."

"Yeah?" She had argued against a baby before, said she wanted to spend a year in D.C., maybe two, before trying. "What about waiting?"

She kissed him. Her whole being seemed to kiss him. She straddled him and began to wage a winning battle for control.

And he was so caught up in what her body was doing to his that he let her. This was one battle he would gladly lose.

"Waiting until January will be long enough." She pushed away from him and smiled at him. He was lost in that smile and in the skirmish and he only wanted what she wanted tonight.

"But tonight, Mr. Seeley Booth," her hands began to roam over his body, tracing battle lines, giving away strategies, "let's not wait on anything."

oOo

He awoke that morning as he sometimes did, the time flashing an insanely early hour: 4:47. Laying next to Carrie, he let his eyes roam around the room, making sense of the familiar objects shrouded by the darkness.

Maybe it was his circadian rhythms still somehow lost in the desert, maybe it was a restless mind that woke him.

Closing his eyes on mornings like this, he could easily put himself back in the desert. In Afghanistan, the desert had stretched for miles in shades of tan under endless blue skies. And more than once he thought a man could get lost there.

Or found.

He'd gone to Afghanistan to help take raw soldiers and bake them in 120 degree heat and burn out anything that didn't belong so he could find the essence of who they were so he could mold them into what they needed to be.

In so many ways, he had wanted the same thing for himself.

And he had come back different. He had come back with what he wanted- a woman who wanted him and wanted a family.

Who knew what Brennan wanted? If she really meant that she wanted _to get lost in love_? If she was even capable of getting lost in anything except her bones.

He turned toward the clock. _Still way too early._

He closed his eyes and tried to reclaim sleep.

But his brain wouldn't stop. He hadn't really resolved anything with Brennan since that night. They hadn't really talked, hadn't really connected since that night, hadn't made sense of his time in the desert and hers in the jungle.

He'd made a mistake that night. Expected too much. Thought that that story, _that damned coma dream_, and all the attention she had paid to him meant something. Five years of partnership meant something.

_Hey, Sweets. How about that for an insight? _

It meant nothing more than partnership. Friendship.

Nothing more.

She couldn't give herself to anyone beyond that.

She could give herself to a career.

She could evade the Chinese army, beat up gang leaders and face down serial killers, but she couldn't give herself to a man who loved her.

He sighed, trying to expel in one breath all the misery, all the pain of that night.

It lingered, probably always would. But it was fading.

Fading in the same way the night was fading into morning. Fading in the same way their partnership was fading.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe they would just drift away from each other now, letting the winds or circumstances or opportunities pull them apart slowly.

Maybe that was the lesson, the insight.

_Hey Sweets, do I get an A for effort, now?_

He had another insight bred from his time in Iraq and Afghanistan: in each desert, God provides an oasis.

It might be hundreds of miles from your position, but God provided.

His oasis had been Carrie.

And everything that happened—Sweets' book, that night, the door opened then slammed shut—everything was meant to send him to Afghanistan so he could meet his fate.

So he could meet Carrie.

oOo

He could keep this professional, just ask the questions he needed to know for the investigation. Hell, he'd done that before Maluku. Before Afghanistan.

But with her standing right there, it was hard not to ask.

"So, when are you going to Egypt?"

The look she gave him was the one reserved for interns asking the obvious. Even he had a momentary stab of indecision before he held ground and waited her out. 

Brennan bent back to her work, gently placing the ulna she had been examining onto the lighted table.

"The cause of death was due to. . . ."

"I don't care about cause of death."

"Then it will probably be very difficult to find the murderer."

Had it been any other time, he might have pointed out that she had made a joke, but her look, meant to freeze interns in place before they trampled an intercranial suture or something, made it clear she was still angry.

"Just answer the question, Bones."

It hadn't been a nightmare that woke him last night, but a memory that seemed to loiter, just waiting on him. But it was so much easier to leave it there, slightly out of focus than to really look closely. It was like this conversation, slightly unclear what they were really talking about, but still within the frame.

Like the uncle always in the family portrait whom no one ever mentioned.

"Yes, I'm going to Egypt in December." The words came as a sigh. "But why is it so important if you already knew?"

"Because we're _partners_." He leaned in. "Because we agreed that we would continue to be _partners_. And as _partners_, we tell each other things, especially if those things affect the _partnership_."

With each word he leaned in a little bit more.

"Partners look out for each other," she said softly. "But they don't use the resources of the FBI to spy on each other."

He straightened as if he had been punched. "I wasn't spying. Charlie mentioned it in passing. He didn't get a chance to fill me in on the details until yesterday."

Her look did not soften, but he could tell she was studying him. He wondered if she was going to try something irrational with him.

"I'm not sure why, but I am angry." She sighed and leveled her eyes with his. "It's not rational."

"And you're all about what's rational."

"And you're so irrational."

There it was, he thought. _Oil and water._

"I was going to tell you, but I," she sighed again, "I wanted to do this without your input."

"You don't ask me about your digs and lectures and whatnot." He shrugged. "Why would my input matter?"

"Because this is different. This is more about matters of the heart." She tilted her head. "You're the one I usually talk to about those things. Well, you and Angela."

"I know you love Egyptology, you love the whole mummy thing, I get it, Bones, I do."

"It's not that. I turned that down."

"What? You're not making any sense, and usually you do."

So she told him. Told him something that seemed so perfectly natural, but knowing her, knowing the history of her family, it seemed so perfectly un-Brennan-like.

"So, you're going to Egypt with your father, your brother and his family for Christmas." He couldn't help grinning. "That's a good thing, Bones."

"My father thought it would make a nice family trip. The girls are old enough to appreciate. . . ."

"I get it, I get it, Bones." He shook his head. "But Charlie said the invitation came at the behest of the museum of mummified things in Cairo."

"The Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo." She had that look on her face, the look that said that she wasn't sure of herself, she was in unfamiliar territory. He hadn't seen it on her face more than a few times in their entire association, and it surprised him especially when she was talking about something she was expert in. "They asked me to be a part of their ancient studies program as an adjunct professor."

"Wow." He paused, the pieces falling into place. "That's what you turned down. Why?"

"I talked it over with Russ and Angela and I decided that it would be best if I wasn't away for the yearlong commitment I would have to make."

Each word came slowly, deliberately as if the thought process had been as painstaking. If there was more, she wasn't saying.

"So, you stayed because your family would miss you." Had she no one in her life like before, she would have jumped at the opportunity. Hell, she probably wanted to go and they guilted her into staying. "There's nothing wrong with that. Hey, I'd miss you."

And he would.

"And I would miss you." She gave him that very direct look she had. "I miss talking to you now, Booth."

"Yeah, me, too."

They stood for several moments, the words echoing in the silence between them.

She broke the stalemate first. "It was a good opportunity, but I have another opportunity, probably more prestigious, of being one of the first Western anthropologists in the world to examine the mummified remains of Queen Acenath. I will be in Egypt for a week to help in the study and then Russ and my dad and everyone will join me in Cairo for two weeks." Her face lit up with pure excitement. "She's known as the Queen of Tears and it's quite possible that with new imaging techniques we can determine if there was something hidden in the remains to tell us more about how she lived."

He had to smile at just how excited she could get talking about ancient remains. He listened to her tell him the history of the mummy and the squinty things they would do to determine how some ancient queen spent her ancient day and he had to admit he missed this as well.

". . . Russ and Amy have been going over an itinerary with the girls, making a list of all the places they'd like to see."

"Sounds nice."

"I was going to tell you, Booth."

"I know, I know. It's my fault. I jumped the gun." To her look he added quickly, "Got ahead of myself."

Again, they stood in silence; to break it he wondered aloud how she'd decided to include Russ in her decisions now.

"Russ can give me a decidedly different point of view. Angela suggested that I take a male point of view, but I don't see the point."

He couldn't help laughing. "No," he said, "no, you wouldn't."

"A point of view is a point of view," she countered, a bit defensively, "it isn't inherently male or female in its perspective."

"But you do know that men and women see the world differently because of their brain chemistry."

"I know that." He could see her struggling to come up with the words to explain herself and it bothered him. They rarely had to over-think what they said to the other. These days she seemed to be measuring out each word with him carefully.

"I know that things have changed because of Carrie, but you're still my partner, Bones." An idea was dancing on the edge of his brain and he didn't much like it. "We're partners."

"Booth, Angela has informed me that some women do not like their husbands or significant others to be closely involved, even in work situations, with a person of the opposite sex or someone to which they have formed an unusually close attachment."

"Some women?" _He definitely didn't like where this was going._

"Angela has also informed me that Carrie is one of those women."

"Wait." Now it was his turn to get angry. But she stood there as if she had just pronounced cause of death over some set of bones. She didn't see any great significance in what she had just said, of that he was certain. To her, it was merely a fact to be stated. "Carrie _is not_ one of those women."

She stood there, her face as neutral as Switzerland.

"Are you sure that you're not one of those women?" Anger propelled him now.

He'd told Carrie about Brennan, told her enough about their convoluted relationship to make her understand that despite everything, he and Brennan could be partners without threatening their upcoming marriage.

He snorted and shook his head and felt suddenly drained. "That's why you're talking to Russ all of a sudden? Why you didn't want to talk to me about Egypt?"

She'd gone from that damned unreadable expression to one he understood better.

"You put great value on your relationship with Carrie, Booth. And I respect that."

Her voice was barely above a whisper, but he understood instantly why she had been so hesitant in speaking to him over these past few weeks, why she had been seeking out her brother and Angela, why she had accepted the newest set of boundaries between them which had pushed her further and further away.

And in spite of the fact that he knew she might be right, it felt wrong.

"I'm friends with lots of women, Bones." He wasn't going to let this stand. "You, Cam, Angela, Caroline. How can you say that Carrie can't accept our friendship for what it is?"

Suddenly she looked as tired as she had the other day in Sweets' office.

"You know," he felt the air grow thick around them, "you're the one with the problem here."

"Don't get angry, Booth."

It wasn't anger he felt. And in this stand-off, this moment of silence that spoke so much between them, he felt something besides anger that she didn't trust Carrie or even him when he told her _they_ would be all right.

He felt something slipping away. Something he really did not want to let go of.

_Where the hell was Gordon Gordon when you really needed him? Or Sweets?_

"Bones."

His name for her hung in the air.

"Bones."

"I have work to do, Booth."

She understood.

She was trying to make this easier for him. To step aside and allow him to have his life with Carrie. To do whatever he needed done.

"Look, Bones, maybe. . . ."

But he couldn't really finish the sentence. Neither Carrie nor Brennan had shown great urgency in getting to know the other. And he hadn't pressed certain of only one thing—he wasn't sure he wanted to share one with the other or if he did and they didn't get along, what he would do about that.

"Booth, change is inevitable. Entropy. . . ."

"Pulls everything apart at the subatomic level." She should be proud to know he had been listening, but it wasn't pride he saw in her face.

Her face said it all.

She understood.

It was all about balance. _They_ were partners.

He was going to marry Carrie. If Carrie was _one of those women_, then the logical thing to do was to be no more than a partner. To give him time and space.

She understood better than he had: Brennan was the desert; Carrie was his oasis.

She bent back to her work, and he watched her for several minutes as she carefully examined the bones before he turned and left.


	4. Locard's principle

**Locard's Principle**

**Author's note: **_Language alert:_ Our eggheads are going to break a few b-words out to describe a particularly loathsome suspect. My apologies to the faint of eye. Or ear.

"Now that's a sight you don't see everyday."

He wasn't sure if Caroline Julian was referring to the photographs of gargantuan insects lining the walls or the image of Dr. Temperance Brennan holding the Hodgins' baby, but as far as he was concerned, just about everything that day was pretty amazing.

Sunday morning had found them all in church for the christening and in the early afternoon at the Hodgins' estate for a celebration brunch.

Hodgins and Angela had given them the cook's tour of their home before the other guests arrived, and each room had been more impressive than the last: the study with its floor-to-ceiling books including a balcony and sliding ladder, the solarium with its collection of rare and exotic plants, and the entertainment suite with a hidden panel behind which could be found an Art Deco bar complete with an inscription invoking Bacchus' blessings on one's guests.

He and Carrie as well as most of the Jeffersonians had ended up in what Angela had dubbed, "the bug room." Along the walls she had artfully hung not only Jack's oversized portraits of bugs as well as some of his collection, but extreme close-ups providing beautiful and intriguing portraits of wings or eyes or shells that looked nothing like wings or eyes or shells.

For Booth, the images of insects offered up something compelling in the images of God's artistry even in the tiniest of creatures. "They're kind of cool," he said, turning toward Carrie. "Parker would like these."

**To his right, Caroline Julian was twisting her head as she peered at something labeled **_**Satyrium acadica**_**. "Still feel like I should have brought a can of Raid in with me," she said. "At the very least, a giant fly swatter."**

He grinned and pulled Carrie closer, then kissed her temple. "I'm not sure I want to eat here," Carrie said. "What if he's one of those etymologists? Studies them, then eats them?"

"Just don't tell me what they are," said Caroline who had skipped the giant insects in favor of the more artistic close-ups, "and I would have to agree, they're kind of _nice_, Cherie, especially if you don't mind your bugs the size of Texas."

Big bugs, big house, big party. He really couldn't blame Angela or Jack for wanting to show off their kid to a very select group of family and friends. She had been angelic in church, and now, cradled in Brennan's arms, she seemed the perfect advertisement for parenthood.

"Motherhood's going to look good on you," he whispered in Carrie's ear. She gave him a look.

"We could start sooner than Hawaii," he suggested.

That idea earned him another look before Carrie wriggled out of his arms. She considered him, considered his proposal and shook her head.

"Hawaii, Seeley. Let's not put the cart before the horse."

He grinned and nodded. If anything, the fact that Carrie had even suggested getting pregnant before her magical "year of marriage" rule had been an interesting development. She had once argued that she was an adrenaline junkie who wasn't sure if motherhood was the right antidote. He attributed her change of mind to her commitment to their marriage.

Both Cam and Angela had had something else to say about it. He'd tried to avoid the subject ever since—he didn't need raised eyebrows and knowing looks from two women who thought they knew what motivated Carrie's decision.

Hodgins had put it succinctly, although in no less uncomfortable terms: "She's really going to lock you into this marriage, dude. She's making this an airtight union."

It didn't matter that Hodgins had gotten Angela pregnant within the early months of their marriage.

"Man, we've known and loved each other for years," Hodgins had reasoned. "A baby isn't meant to lock us up together. A baby is an expression of our love."

Brennan had only congratulated him and said little else.

"That kid spends much time in here and she'll turn into one of the squints," Caroline offered as she looked at another of the enlargements. "Or be traumatized for life."

_That kid_ was still burbling happily in Brennan's arms as she and Cam and Michelle were admiring the extreme close-up of a butterfly wing. Christened Seeley Joy Hodgins this morning in church, he didn't think the baby had left Brennan's arms for more than a few minutes since they had arrived at the Hodgins' home.

He'd done the honors in church, standing at the baptismal font with Angela and Jack and Brennan, the little bundle cradled in his arms as he played his role as godfather. The name had been a surprise, a shock really, since Angela and Jack had offered up a whole list of possible names before and after the birth of the child without really deciding upon one until the last minute at the church. "I changed _my name_," Angela had been saying all along, "and I expect she may just want to pick her name when the time is right."

Brennan that week had reminded them all that Native Americans were given a name at birth and then chose or were given a new name when they came of age. "So Angela selecting a name for herself is rooted in tradition, albeit Native American tradition. Angela is a good name for Angela," she offered, "and probably reflects a better understanding of her true nature."

"That's psychology, Sweetie," Angela had said. "And I didn't think you believed in angels."

"I don't believe in angels," Brennan had countered. "But some people do display the general attitude and personality traits ascribed to angels in literature although the whole wing array is aerodynamically impossible."

He'd seen the many faces of Temperance Brennan over the years, but that morning at the baptism, when Angela had announced their choice of name, he'd seen another. Certainly they'd both been surprised by the choice—and he was grateful for the second name so that the child wouldn't be saddled with just Seeley—but Brennan had look positively overwhelmed at first. It took him a long time to come up with the word to describe the emotion, something that really captured the essence of the connection Brennan made with the littlest Hodgins when she had recovered her bearings.

It was rapture.

And she'd never looked more beautiful then when she whispered the name's meaning, "Blessed happiness," over the head of their godchild.

"So, I don't understand. _I understand_ the Seeley part," Carrie was saying as she twisted her head to examine the enlarged picture of a bug part he didn't really want the name of, although it was probably a wing and looked kind of like feathery leopard spots. "I understand that they wanted to honor you and Temperance, but what, is her name Temperance Joy Brennan?" She sighed and made a frown at the image. "Her parents really wanted to keep a lid on her, didn't they? Tempered happiness. It does kind of fit her."

"No," said Caroline, twisting her head as well to make sense of the pattern of iridescent colors, "I imagine it's no big secret being part of the public record and all that, but Joy is Dr. Brennan's birth name. Her real name."

It was Carrie's turn to look surprised. "Really? Wow!" She nudged him. "To go from Joy to Temperance, there's a story there, isn't there?"

Before he could confirm her suspicions, Jack and Angela had appeared. "If you'll all follow me back to the dining room," Hodgins announced, "we've got a nice brunch for you now." He approached Brennan with his arms opening. "I need to take our little Joy now for her own brunch."

The transfer went smoothly from Brennan to Hodgins except for one little hiccup. Followed by a burp.

And Seeley Joy Hodgins deposited a well-aimed bit of spit-up on her father's suit coat.

But Hodgin's smile never broke. "Little one, that's the third time today."

"Joy likes you, Dr. Hodgins," Michelle supplied. "She must, she's marking her

territory."

"That's why I like my children bigger," said Cam, "they're less likely to do that."

As if on cue, Angela pulled tissues from her pockets in what must have been a familiar ritual.

"She's destined to be a squint," Booth offered as Jack Hodgins held his infant daughter up and away from the suit jacket as Angela dabbed at the mess.

"Yes, she is," Hodgins said. "She's already well-acquainted with Locard's Exchange Principle."

To Carrie's quizzical look, Brennan said it was not logical to know if someone was already predestined for an occupation without letting environmental, social and intellectual factors play a role in the development of the child.

"But what's this Locard's Exchange thing?" asked Carrie impatiently.

"Locard's Exchange Principle at work," Brennan said, pointing toward Hodgins who was divesting himself of his jacket while Angela cradled the baby who was laughing happily. "When two objects come into contact there will be an exchange of trace particulates."

"And she's definitely your daughter," said Angela. "She knows just how much you love particulates, Jack."

oOo

Something about a baby made everything seem pretty rosy.

It was his general attitude when he stepped into Angela's office and sidled up to Seeley Joy who was fast asleep in her carrier, a baby monitor blinking at her side. "Hey, little one," he tried his finger next to her fist and nudged it gently. "Uncle Seeley's here. Wanna wake up for me, little one?" A gentle wake up call seemed in order given the monitor and whoever was on the receiving end's tendency to come running the moment the thing squawked. "Wakey, wakey."

"Don't you dare unless you are prepared to be at my house every night for a week for the 2 a.m. feedings, Seeley Booth."

He came to attention immediately as Angela entered. "She looked like she was having a bad dream. . . . "

"Save it, mister," Angela whispered. "She'd down for the count and I'm hoping to grab a nap with her if I can just get these renderings to run." She fiddled with something on her computer.

"You're keeping your mother up at night? And making her all grouchy?"

Angela turned to him, hand on hip and a piece of paper in the other. "This is the third rendering I have done of the skull because Jack spilled formula on the first one, Cam picked up Seeley Joy who promptly spit up on the second rendering and," she sighed, "I really am too tired to do another one."

He really did feel a little sheepish; Angela did look more than a little tired. "Just looking for Bones. She had some information about Pederson." Seeley Joy had wrapped her hand around his finger in sleep and he was torn between staying attached or staying on Angela's good side.

"Brennan," she sighed, "Brennan is in her office with Caroline Julian. They went in there a half hour ago, shut the door and no one's been allowed to venture into the inner sanctum since." She finally noticed his finger in her daughter's hand and eyed him. The kid had a pretty good grip.

"Why's Caroline here? What's she meeting with Brennan about?"

"Not really sure although I'd give anything for someone to give me a half hour of solitude." Her eyeing was turning into a stare.

He carefully pried his finger loose, a bit reluctantly, and began to head toward the door when Cam came marching in.

She had come in under full steam but noticed the baby asleep and stopped short. "Is the Pederson rendering done, yet?" she whispered.

Angela, ever-patient Angela, closed her eyes, sighed, re-opened them and turned toward Cam. "I'm just scanning it in _now_, Dr. Saroyan."

While her tone was solicitous, her body language was anything but. He felt more than a little sympathy for both women.

"Ohhh-kay." Cam stood frozen in place.

Angela had turned back to her computer. He caught Cam's eyes and cocked his head toward the door.

Escape seemed the best course of action.

He'd wait out whatever meeting was going on between Brennan and Caroline, get his information and. . . . He stole one more look at the sleeping infant and considered again how nice it would be to have another little one in his life. Carrie had been vacillating; one minute she seemed on board with having a baby and the next. . . .

His thoughts on the matter ended the moment he saw Caroline Julian steaming into the office. "Good, I have you all. . . ."

And all hell seemed to break free of its moorings as little Joy let loose with one great howl of protest at being woken unceremoniously. Angela gave him and Cam and Caroline a look of protest as well.

For her part, Caroline Julian rolled her eyes, shook her head and wagged a finger in the direction of the littlest squint. In the same amount of time it took for her to break the silence, little Joy immediately quieted down.

No one dared mess with Miss Julian.

Caroline bent her finger and all three of them followed out of Angela's office leaving the baby behind.

He could put together any number of scenarios for the meeting between Brennan and the prosecutor. None right now were appealing given the look on Caroline's face which told him it was only trouble.

"Caroline?" he started then stopped immediately when she raised her hand to hush him.

He could tell that look in Caroline's eyes. He'd seen it the night he'd gone to talk over the evidence in the Heather Taffet case only to find out that Brennan and Hodgins had dropped charges against their kidnapper. It was here again, a mixture of sympathy and resolve.

"We have a problem with the Mercedes case," Caroline said, "courtesy of your girlfriend."

Caroline Julian could crack wise at twenty paces, but he rarely heard her crack anything but serious about this case. A month of long hot showers could do little to wash away the horrors Dana Mercedes had been subjected to before being brutally murdered.

"I know, I know," she said, stopping the avalanche of questions hurtling toward her. "The Constitution gives the right to the press to print whatever the hell they see fit to print, but I wish they would draw the line at questioning the integrity of one forensic anthropologist."

"Do you mind telling us what is going on, Caroline?"

Caroline considered Cam's question, looked at Booth and seemed resigned to a course of action that, given her expression, she was reluctant to take.

"You all might as well know why since it's in at least a million homes by now."

She put an open newspaper before them. "I'm sorry I didn't bring you extra copies," she said, "although I'm considering cancelling my subscription."

Cam took up the paper first and held it out for them to read. The article covered the journey of one Joy Keenan who was renamed Temperance Brennan when her parents sought to escape their old lives and included the 15-year-old's stint in foster care where she was repeatedly abused by various foster parents until she aged out of the system and turned her Dickensian past into a glowing career aiding the FBI in catching criminals behind the strength of a genius brain and three doctorates.

"Oh, my God," Angela said. She made a move toward Brennan's office, but Caroline stopped her.

"She's dealing with her father right now, Cherie. Apparently he's got his own issues because of the article."

"Max?"

"I imagine we'll be hearing from the third Brennan fairly soon," she said, referring to Russ. "Trouble and Brennans all seem to run in threes."

"The newspaper's looking for anything that connects to the Mercedes case and they run this?" Cam looked troubled. "It makes it look like Dr. Brennan is hiding her past."

"Newspapers love to dig up irony," Caroline started up again. "Unfortunately, this is a bit of irony I'd just as soon they hadn't unearthed."

He looked toward Brennan's office. "Bones couldn't have liked this."

Caroline's heavy sigh told him all he needed to know. "The defense already knows that Dr. Brennan will only testify that she recovered Dana Mercedes remains and pieced them back together so Dr. Edison could figure out how many ways to Sunday that man abused that beautiful young woman." She grimaced. "I've wanted to put that son of a bitch away ever since you found out he smashed in his own foster child's head and hacked her like he did. Went on local TV to cry and tell anybody who'd listened that she ran away."

"So, what now? Brennan can't testify?" Angela paid a glance toward Brennan's office.

"Brennan can be objective about all this."

"You know she can be objective. I know she can be objective. The problem is does the jury know she can be objective?" Caroline made one decisive swoop of her head. "I came here to warn Dr. Brennan that her past is going to go up on that stand tomorrow in the defense's attempt to save that smarmy bastard."

He imagined another beautiful young woman destroyed by the latest. "Ange, maybe you should . . ." He didn't need to finish for Angela to take off toward Brennan's office.

"Now that we know you're sleeping with the enemy," Caroline said, "we'll just be a little more careful of what we say."

The thought hadn't occurred to him, but Cam had already refolded the paper to the front page: The _Journal_.

"It's not Carrie's story, Caroline." He grabbed the paper from Cam's hands and looked for the story within its pages. "There."

The byline wasn't familiar, but the story was. Except for the abuse during foster care. He'd always suspected and he only knew of the one instance. . . . He cast another look toward Brennan's office. He could see little from this angle.

Cam was standing with her arms folded and her head bobbing.

"What?"

"I know you don't want to consider this, Seeley. . . ."

"No, Cam. Don't go there." _Carrie had nothing to do with this._ "Caroline, I thought foster care records were sealed."

"They are, Cherie. _Normally_." He wasn't liking this. "In the fine state of Illinois, there was a court case not too long ago in which case workers' files were opened because of several abuse cases under their watch. The cases were opened, the children, mind you, were identified only by locations and case numbers, but some fine soul put two and two together."

"How?"

Caroline gave them both a look. "She lived in a small town, she was older when she went into the system. It doesn't matter, Cherie. Someone figured out from this, that and the other thing that one of the abused children could have been your partner, Seeley Booth." She pursed her lips and gave him a look. He didn't like that look. "We were enjoying ourselves at that little soiree at your bug man's mansion and gave little thought to who we were talking to."

"Look, Caroline, that's not fair. Carrie had nothing to do with this story." He _hoped_ she hadn't.

But Cam's look told him she wasn't buying his protests. "We all said things in front of her last Sunday. I mentioned your partner's birth name." Caroline was skewering him with her eyes as she talked. "Someone else slips, calls Max Brennan by his real name and it doesn't take one of these geniuses to connect the dots."

"And she has reason to want to drive a wedge in between you and Brennan."

Cam's words hung in the air and almost strangled him.

"No, no, Cam. Carrie and Bones are fine with each other." He _hated_ Cam right now, _hated_ Caroline, _hated_ this whole sorry mess. He looked toward Brennan's office. "Don't even put that out there. They are fine. Everything is fine."

He felt Caroline's hand on his arm. "Look, Cherie, your partner's a strong woman. She'll get past this. It helps that they were guessing about some of the details."

"Guessing?"

Cam's tone said it all. Half-truths about their most truthful scientist had to be as galling as any truths about her past. He couldn't imagine the emotions battling within Brennan right now.

"She's going to let this whole thing blow over." Caroline cocked her head toward Brennan's office. "To set the record straight would only invite more light to shine on something she would much rather keep in the dark. You need to contact Dr. Edison, tell him he's going to need a good night's sleep for tomorrow," she said to Cam. "You," she stared at him, "you be careful about what you say about me during your pillow talk." She made to leave. "I don't want my life on view in glorious 10-point type in the pages of the _Journal_."

oOo

It had been one of the cases he'd caught soon after they'd returned from their pilgrimages to Afghanistan and Indonesia. Kasen Kleckman and his wife had taken in a foster child only to subject Dana Mercedes to abuse and torture before dismembering her and scattering her remains over acres of land around their home.

Brennan had spent hours on site and even more hours in the lab reconstructing a skeleton that had been practically pulverized. It had been the only way to document what had happened to a 15-year-old girl who had thought that riding horses on the Kleckman farm would be "kind of cool."

He watched her for several minutes after Angela left, Brennan's attention taken up by something on her computer. He watched her type a few more words before she hit send and turned toward something else on her desk.

"You okay, Bones?"

"Yeah, why?" Her face wore that mask of neutrality she could don once she had decided to give no more thought to something that would trouble less strong-minded individuals. Caroline had been right—if even one-tenth of the abuse that was detailed in the story had occurred, no one would know unless Brennan wanted them to know.

"Caroline was here." She looked up sharply. "I may not be able to testify in the Mercedes case."

"We don't have a confession. All we have is the forensics and some inconsistencies in the story. She just wants to protect the case, Bones."

He knew she understood the legal wrangling that could harm their case. She hadn't liked that someone might doubt her abilities or her honesty, but she had stepped aside for the case. For Dana Mercedes. She knew the story told in her bones couldn't easily be erased.

"The _Journal_ reporter didn't get all the facts right, Booth." In an instant she went from the strong-willed, indomitable Dr. Temperance Brennan to her 15-year-old self who had been left alone to navigate an unfriendly world she did not understand and which did not understand her. It was a side of her he was sure she hadn't shown to Caroline, but now, in her own office, in front of him, she allowed the control to slip. "No one contacted me to verify the information." She looked at him under hooded eyes, her emotions ragged. "I conduct research and use verifiable information in my novels, Booth. In works of fiction."

She was careful in everything she did. She would not stray from the truth even in her books.

"So what do you want to do? Set the record straight?"

She was shaking her head slowly, the idea as uncomfortable as the twisted truths.

He made a step forward, his arms opening to draw her into a hug, but she shook her head and visibly stiffened.

He stopped.

There were boundary lines drawn she wasn't going to cross.

"Carrie didn't have anything to do with this."

Caroline and Cam didn't believe that. Would probably never believe that. But Brennan was different. _She_ saw the world differently.

"No, why? Why would I think that?"

_She_ wouldn't go there. So why the hell was he going there? "I just thought that, well, you know, the story appeared in her paper, she might have said something. Well, you know."

The confusion on her face was fleeting, then gone. "I don't think that. I know that Angela said. . . ."

"Angela?"

_Now it was three against one. _

"Booth. It happened. My father was already. . . ."

"Your dad?" This was snowballing into something ugly. "What did he say?"

She was now the 15-year-old girl again trying to battle back to be her 34-year-old self. "He wanted to know about what happened in foster care." She grimaced. "He was pretty upset, Booth."

He really did want to hug her. He really did want to chase away the demons. Hold her until the world disappeared around them. "He's your dad, Bones. He got a picture of what you might have gone through and it bothers him. It should bother him."

"It's over. I just want to get back to work on the Pederson case."

And that is how she dealt with things. If she had been a gambler or an alcoholic, he would have said that she had let go and let God handle things, but she was an atheist. Her God was science.

He looked down at his feet and then back at her. She'd drifted behind her desk again and was shifting the folders there looking for something. She let out a long breath. "I thought. . . here it is." She pulled out a folder and opened it, then handed it to him. "Pederson's bones show a calcium deficiency."

"So he didn't drink milk."

She gave him that look she would give him when she thought he was being particularly blockheaded. She was back to the latest case and her 15-year-old self was safely stowed away. "But he did ingest a toxin that made it difficult for his bones to absorb. . . ."

He listened to her explanation, nodding and taking in more of the woman in front of him than the science. She hurt, the memories hurt, but she wasn't taking potshots at the reporter or looking for scapegoats. It was the truth—or partial truth of her life—and she couldn't hit a rewind button. She wouldn't. Nor would she toss the recorder against the wall in a fit of self-pity.

He tried to get his own mind back to the case. "So. . . the bottom line is, what?"

She pursed her lips. "We need to find out who uses those particular chemicals." She gave him an odd look.

"What?"

"Did you hear anything I said?"

"I followed most. . . _some_ of it."

"Do you want me to start over?"

"No." He held up his hand, happier to be concerned with the case than the thoughts ricocheting in his head. "No, just lead me to the squint with the answers."

oOo

Talk to Brennan and everything was about _the truth_.

Talk to Carrie, and everything was about _the truth_.

And how, he wondered, could the same thing be so different?

He had come straight out and asked Carrie that night. Come out and asked her if she had anything to do with the story about Brennan.

"No." She shook her head decisively. It was the eye contact that told him everything he needed to know. "I haven't pitched any stories about your squinty crew." She shook her head and shrugged. "I don't spend much time talking about your partner to my friends or co-workers. But I can call the reporter, ask for some background, if you want. I know it's part of that on-going series on the foster care system, a reaction to the Mercedes Case. I think they were trying to localize the angle, focus on the irony of the forensic anthropologist in the case practically being a case herself."

"Where did they get their information? Brennan doesn't talk about her past. She doesn't do that."

She stood up from their dinner table and started gathering the dishes. "Doesn't she have an obligation to tell the prosecution that this would be a conflict of interest? That her background muddies the case?"

"She did, Carrie. Bones wouldn't hurt the case we built. She wouldn't allow her feelings to cloud her judgment. Dr. Edison was the lead forensic anthropologist on this."

"Besides," he said, "it wasn't even the truth of what happened to her. Well, not the whole truth."

"What?" She stood like the scales of justice, bowls in either hand, weighing one bit of information against the last. "Now you're saying the reporter got it wrong?"

So he told her. Told her how painful the case had been to Brennan, how painful it was for her to pass it on to Clark to finish.

And why.

He didn't know the whole truth of her past, and he had never pressed, but if Brennan said they didn't have something right, he believed her.

For several minutes Carrie stood there, listening, shifting as the weight of the bowls now and then.

When he finished, she seemed to be studying the table.

"That explains a lot, Seeley," she said finally. "She was victimized by her parents, a brother, the system. It's probably what makes her so good at what she does. She wants to give the victims a voice."

"Kleckman's attorneys are desperate and they're probably going to use this to discredit her testimony tomorrow." He could read the wealth of emotions on Carrie's face easily. "Bones doesn't like her findings questioned. Especially over something outside of the case."

"I'm sorry, Seeley. I'm sorry about the case. I hope this doesn't let that murdering bastard get off."

He made a decisive shake of his head. "No. We've got Caroline. Clark and Cam are supposed to go tomorrow, too. Bones will be fine on the stand. She's only testifying to what was found on the scene and how she went about reconstructing the remains." He had to make this clear so that Carrie could see. "It just makes it look like she was hiding something. The defense will pounce on that, but Bones wouldn't let her past affect this case."

"It's often how it goes, Seeley. Perception becomes reality." She took a few steps forward, dumped the bowls back on the table, and sank into the chair. She took a deep breath. "It's the job of the press to report the facts, the facts as we know them to be true. But we cannot control how people interpret those facts, Seeley."

"So it's a matter of everyone just doing their job?"

Carrie rested her chin on her hand. "Isn't it? Everyone does their job on this one. Everyone. It just gets messy because people are messy. If Brennan didn't want to fight crime, she should just stay in her lab. But she wants to use her knowledge in the real world, then she's got to understand that in the real world, people are going to have pasts. And sometimes those pasts are flawed. At least she'll get a chance to set the record straight."

"I don't see this as a major issue, Seeley. But I get the impression that it is, somehow, for you."

How to explain the walls that Brennan had in place all afternoon as she focused her attention on another case? He bent forward. "She doesn't lie. _She wouldn't lie_."

The instant he said the words, he realized they were somehow inadequate.

Carrie stood and retrieved the bowls. "So she should be glad that the truth will come out in court tomorrow." He could practically see her thinking as she stood at the other side of the table. "Seeley, I know she's your partner. I know you have your history and all. But the reality is she's got a past that could be in conflict with the case she's on. Granted, she played a small role in the case, not a critical role, but her background was probably going to come out at some point anyway. The press has an obligation. . . ."

"Obligation?"

"Obligation, Seeley, to uncover that truth. You don't uncover just part of the truth in a murder investigation if you can help it. You don't just look for part of the truth. You look for as much information as possible." She shrugged. "I know you want to protect her. It's what you do, you protect people. It's why I love you. But you can't protect her from being uncomfortable or embarrassed. She's going to have to face the facts tomorrow. If it makes her uncomfortable and puts away a murderer, then I think she might opt for a little embarrassment."

He listened as she ran water in the sink and he thought to join her, but he felt he didn't have the words to finish the conversation. How to explain Brennan? How to explain how she seemed at war with emotions? How to explain what he was feeling when he wasn't even sure?

"I'm not in any danger of having Max Brennan come after me, am I?" she called from the kitchen. Carrie was trying to lighten the mood, but his mood hadn't really been anything but gray most of the day since the story broke. "He's not lurking out there, is he?"

"No, Max. . . just don't worry about Max."

Carrie reappeared from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. She seemed to be studying him before she slid into the seat opposite from him and slipped her hand in his.

"Let's see. Perception is reality. Everyone at the Jeffersonian now thinks I'm Rasputin, manipulating events behind the scenes at my newspaper to hurt Brennan."

"Not everyone."

She squeezed his hand. "It's better to have some of the truth out there than none of it." She smiled. "You'll see. It's unfortunate that it came out this way, but it's far better to have the truth out there, some of the truth, at least."


	5. Booth's partners

**Booth's partners**

**Author's note:** _Despite bribes and pleas, the chapter refused to write itself and decided to meander off into another county entirely._ _After a thorough scolding,_ _the story progresses along its original lines._

"No."

Had he understood, really understood what she was asking, the answer might have been different. Certainly it was the only response he could give in his official capacity, but he'd defied authority before. Sometimes he'd twisted words around, turned a misdemeanor into a misinterpretation.

And sometimes he had done far worse than that for her.

But poised with her arms locked in front of her, her head tilted just slightly, her eyes focused intensely on his, his own pose mirroring hers, he also knew Temperance Brennan wasn't likely to back down.

So neither was he.

"Come on, Booth, what's the harm?" Angela was looking between them; he could catch the stutter of her eyes in his peripheral vision. "Three days. All we're asking for is three days to find out something more."

He had had no idea why he had been summoned to the Jeffersonian that morning, the voicemail message from Brennan cold and insistent. If it had not been for the guilt he still felt for the Kleckman trial, for watching her go through her own personal hell, for seeing how she icily dismissed the retraction that showed up days after the original article—_no, he still would have shown up_. It would not have been a senseless Catholic guilt propelling him then. Most days he might have recognized her snarkiness on the phone as just _being Bones_ and sauntered in, giving her sarcastic tit for scientific tat, until he could cajole her out of her mood and onto some higher ground where they could talk it out.

But no. He had gone to work, pissy from his own debate with Carrie that morning, pissy from having to choose between a night out with her friends or a night out with her friends, pissy from having a choice and having no choice. Then to be told, no, _commanded_ really, to come to the Jeffersonian?

He was doing with Bones now what he had wished he had done with Carrie that morning.

"Look, two days, Booth. Just lose the paperwork for two days. We can find out something in two, right Bren? We just need two days, Booth."

Angela, who was just as expert in the many moods of Temperance Brennan and probably had a few more tricks for dealing with each, was now trying to negotiate the nonnegotiable. He should feel some sympathy for her, caught between two immoveable objects, trying to shift one just a bit so the other could shift so it would appear that neither had lost any ground.

"No," he said again.

Brennan gave him back the iceberg stare she'd adopted during the Kleckman trial—the same look that Caroline Julian probably saw during the cross examination. The icy look she'd given the defense attorney who questioned her objectivity in the case, who asked her about her childhood in foster care, who outlined the abuses she'd endured courtesy of some erroneous article.

Caroline's description was a bit different than his take on that look, especially now. "She looked the devil in the eye and told him what he could do with himself," the prosecutor had quipped.

"Brennan. Two days," Angela said. "We can't do this without the evidence. We need his help. Come on, Sweetie."

The iceberg was still there, but it was now melting a bit around the edges, softening. Logic outweighed any emotion here; she needed what he had.

"_Please_." Brennan's whole posture seemed to shift, soften. "Booth, _please_ _help_."

Her words were scarcely above a whisper, but Brennan had budged, the pleading in her voice clearly showing just how far she would move to give him room.

"Two days, Booth." Angela's tone was hopeful now. "Just two."

It was his turn to give a little. She'd given him plenty of wiggle room; all he had to do was nod and end the stalemate. It was easy. A single nod and they could move past this.

It really wasn't much. Move that pile of papers to a new spot; shuffle a few things. Misplace a file. Hold off the inevitable for a few days. _What would be the harm?_

But he had been tangled up in those damned definitions that Sweets had insisted upon lately: his _partner for work _and his _partner in life_. He was damned tired of being squeezed between them. He was damned if he was going to get squeezed by them.

"No," he said, finally with one shake of his head. "_No_."

In a millisecond, Brennan's look was pure ice. Cold and haughty. He didn't know if the look damned him to the fate of the Titanic or to the minions of the devil, but it did not matter. "Since Cam has already agreed," she said, snapping off her gloves, her disdain cool and crisp, her voice low and even, "we will just do this without your assistance."

oOo

Sometimes the human body just quit.

He'd seen so much murder and mayhem in his life: people burned, stabbed, shot, eaten, desiccated, frozen, crucified. As far as he was concerned, human beings had far too many ways in which to end another's life.

But sometimes the human body simply grew tired and ceased to function.

That's what had happened to David Renton. They had found his body in his Maryland home only after the local postman informed authorities of the pile of mail accumulating behind the mail slot of his door. A retired government worker from some State Department office, his death had earned an investigation by the FBI. It had taken Brennan's brain trust less than a day to deduct that Mother Nature had simply reclaimed one of her own.

On the heels of the Kleckman trial, David Renton's death had been a brief respite—_almost welcome in its own way_—from their regular business.

Until no one claimed the body.

Maybe it was working with murders every day that made them view this one so differently. Maybe it was the oddity of finding that only age and the natural deterioration of the human body had brought about his end rather than greed or lust or another of the deadly sins.

But none of them had thought it natural that the man should go out of the world so utterly alone.

"They're just going to dig around in his background a little bit, Seeley. Find out if he had any friends or family that were missed in the initial investigation," Cam said. She sipped her coffee and peered over the cup. "I kind of agree with Angela; everyone should be missed."

He couldn't quite argue with that; in fact, once Brennan had strode off and Angela had given him a parting shot before exiting, he had called Charlie to send them the boxes of papers and mail they had found in Renton's home.

For all Brennan's arguments why he should help, for all her stubborn posturing, it was Angela's last words that did the trick: _"She needs this, Booth."_

"We didn't miss anything, Cam." He retrieved the dice from his pocket and looked around; the mid-morning crowd at the diner was sparse. "I checked all the databases. The guy was clean. Paid his taxes. Owned his house. Had no family. Wife died 12 years ago. No children." He recited the facts to the steady clicking of the dice in his hands. "It's not a murder. It's not our case."

Cam gave him the look he knew too, too well. "This is so your kind of case, Seeley." He could feel Cam looking at him, assessing, deciding. "You _really_ told them you wouldn't help?"

"It's not our case, Cam. It's not like I have the time. . . ."

Her hand went up. "Whoa." Her eyes gave no quarter. "What gives, Seeley? And don't give me _'it's not our case'_ either because this is the kind of thing you love. So give."

It took him a bit to get started, to push aside his pride, but this was Cam and she had seen more of him over the years than anyone else. So he told her. How Carrie felt more comfortable with her friends than his since the Kleckman trial. How Carrie had cornered him into dinner with her friends. How Brennan had seemed to corner him as well with her project.

By the time he was done, Cam had finished her coffee, her eyes never quite straying too long from his own.

"Taking it out on Angela and Brennan. . . ," she began.

"I know." He stowed his dice back into pocket. "I already sent over the papers we found in the guy's desk. A box of his mail." He spread his hand over the table and began to play with the edge of the placemat. "Knowing them, they'll find out he was some Russian spy and bring down the whole State Department." He tried a smile, but it felt like he was trying too hard.

She considered his answer for some time and he wondered as she did that if he could just restart the day. _"Groundhog Day," right? Keep replaying the day's events until things went right. _

"Are you getting cold feet, Seeley?"

"No." His answer was as emphatic as his response to Brennan that morning. "Not cold feet. Not cold anything." He sat back and exhaled loudly. "Just a lot of adjustments. A lot of compromises."

"Seems to be a few of those since you came back."

Cam's statement belonged in the same category as Angela's parting shot from that morning: _loaded._

"I feel, I don't know," he started, "like I have to choose."

"Work and wife?"

He shook his head. "Friends and wife." _Or should he say, partner and wife?_

Cam's eyes held a sympathy he didn't think he quite deserved.

She patted his hand. "All Brennan and Angela want is a few days to look into this man's background. Find out something about the man before they turn the body over to be cremated. Angela just thought it sad that the man had no people in his life. I'm surprised about Brennan's involvement, but," she shrugged, "maybe she needs something like this right now. They just want some closure on the man, Seeley."

oOo

The muscles of his back felt knotted as he eased back onto the cool sheets. He heard her from the bathroom recounting the conversation she had had at dinner with her friend. _Effie? Ellie?_ Carrie had seemed electrified by the evening's fare: dinner and conversation with two of her close friends and their spouses.

He'd gone, unable to protest something he had agreed to that morning. Carrie had billed it as an opportunity to discover her _deepest, darkest secrets_ from two of her oldest friends.

"They really love you, Seeley," she said as she switched off the light of the bathroom. She stood at the edge of the bed, rubbing lotion over her hands and arms. "They think you are sweet and smart." She climbed into her side of the bed and bent to him, punctuating her words with a kiss. "I know you're funny and sexy and charming, and they are so jealous of me because," she left a trail of scented lotion as she eased down onto her side, "I have you."

He couldn't help but smile. Her mood _was_ contagious and as much as he felt coerced into the dinner tonight, he had to admit that once he had relaxed into it, it had been one of the better parts of the day.

He wasn't one for bonding with other couples, but Carrie's friends had been pleasant enough and he actually enjoyed talking sports with Michael. . . _what was his last name? Fitzgerald_, and the other guy, John Elken.

But it seemed like there was a hidden thread in the evening, something that tickled his consciousness. He sized her up; she was so easy to read right now. Her chatter had filled in the silences since he had asked her on the car ride home from the restaurant. He tried again. "So do you want to go out with the squints to celebrate Wendell's birthday next week? He's mostly normal."

Her silent answer hung heavy in the room.

He turned his head and tried to read her face, but she turned from him and turned off the light on her side of the bed.

He turned on his light.

She shifted toward him, shielding her eyes. "Seeley, do you really want to talk about this now?"

"Yes."

She sat up and put a pillow behind her back. "The drinks at the Founding Fathers after the Kleckman verdict were," she glanced at him, "tense, to put it mildly. It felt awkward. Like everyone was angry with me, Seeley, when they should have been angry at the reporter who got his facts wrong. A reporter who, _by the way_, was fired for his mistakes."

"I know it was a black eye for journalists, but I don't want to feel like I have to apologize all the time for my profession with your people."

It _had been_ awkward, made more so by the fact that the guilty verdict in the Kleckman trial came the same day as the retraction for the article about Brennan's time in foster care. Whatever sense of satisfaction Brennan had had for the verdict had been tempered by the reminder of just how many more people had had a glimpse into her past—even a faulty glimpse.

"Bones doesn't hold anything against your profession or against you, Carrie. She doesn't do that."

He heard the sigh—it seemed to be the same sigh she used every time he mentioned his _partner for work _these days.

"I know, Seeley. '_It's not rational for someone to hold an entire profession responsible for the unethical and mis. . ._ .'"

"Enough."

He turned and stabbed the button for the light and the room became both dark and silent.

These days when they talked about Brennan, he felt like they were talking through window glass—seeing each other's point but never quite being able to touch the truth in the words.

He'd made his points before—what you saw was what you got with Brennan: brilliant, literal, rational, honest, honorable, driven.

And she was his friend. _That_ should be enough.

"You had a good time tonight, right? We could go out with them again; they'll be in town until the end of the month. I know you liked them, Seeley."

Carrie's words rattled around the room. The darkness seemed to seep into him and he lay there wondering if there was some sort of cosmic balance sheet on this sort of thing: _trade one friend for a lover, two for a wife. _

He heard her sigh. "I don't. . . I can't read her, Seeley. I'm so much like you. I can read people, but with her, I don't know. Sometimes I have her figured out, I think I see her how you see her. But other times it's like a wall has gone up and she won't let people past it."

"That's just how she is, Carrie." He knew what those walls hid, or at least he had more than a fair idea what lay behind them. "It takes time with Bones."

He heard her shifting in the bed, the bedclothes rustling as she slid further beneath them. "Six months. Six months, Seeley. I got to be pretty close to the head chef at the White House and that took six days."

"I like Cam and Angela. Jack's pretty funny. He reminds me of a leprechaun."

For several minutes, all he could hear was her breathing out of rhythm with his own.

"I got to ask, Seeley. Those novels. Kathy and Andy?" He could hear her moving in the bed and her voice seemed to be aimed at him. "Ellen brought it up and I didn't have an answer. If she's fantasizing about those things in her novels, is she thinking about doing those things in real life? Huh? You're obviously Andy. . . ."

He chuckled. "Carrie, let it go. She's the first to tell you, I'm not Andy. It's fantasy, not reality. Far from reality. Believe me." He wanted to tell her to go ask Angela if she didn't believe him, but he thought better of it. He wouldn't betray Brennan's writing process. He wouldn't betray her. He twisted toward Carrie and could see her silhouette against the street lights from the window. "I get it. You don't understand her. You don't get Bones."

He heard that sigh again.

"I don't ever want to do that thing on page 187." Their conversation had taken a turn from the disjointed toward the surreal. "It would be too creepy, like she was here with us."

The silence took command again and he tried to quash the erotic thoughts that suddenly crowded his imagination.

"I like them, Seeley. I really do. I like your _squint squad_. Next week is fine. I should be done with the Kagan profile by then."

The silence settled in.

He heard her breathing deepen into a pattern of sleep and he lay there watching the lights from the street travel across the ceiling with the passing traffic.

Sleep eluded him. Whatever dances he was engaged in with his partners—_for work, in life_— had been out of step all day. He and Brennan had only succeeded in stepping on each other's toes.

And Carrie? Her words kept twirling around the room and transforming into the real message: _"I like your squint squad, . . . ."_

"_. . . I don't like Bones."_

oOo

He would have liked to have blamed the reporter who wrote the story exposing Brennan's supposed past. Or Kleckman for murdering Dana Mercedes in the first place and bringing them all to this place.

But it was one of those uncomfortable jumbling of events, a release of a pinball, really, that caromed out of control and made everything awkward and uncomfortable for Carrie that night.

And Brennan. Especially Brennan.

They were celebrating the guilty verdict at the Founding Fathers, but really trying to drown the emotions that roiled around that week. Caroline Julian had characterized Brennan's testimony in one line the moment the anthropologist and her best friend had headed toward the bathroom together: "The devil himself was begging for mercy."

Her words were a sense of relief, a reminder of just how strong-minded Brennan could be. "Told the defense attorney, she was biased, biased against anyone who would smash a skull into over 57 pieces." She had leveled her eyes with her audience. "At least the 57 pieces she could find."

It had been typical Brennan in an atypical position of being both witness and victim.

The triumph had lasted only for a moment. Carrie had meant well. She arrived bringing the evening edition of the newspaper containing the retraction of the story about Brennan's past and had intercepted her and Angela before they made it back to the table.

Some fiction had finally been separated from some truth.

Angela's expression had said it all—concern, pain, sadness— as the two friends bent over the paper.

Whatever Brennan felt, no one would know. She had frozen, tucking her emotions carefully behind a wall of icy calm before thanking Carrie for the information then excusing herself and leaving.

Any celebration of a guilty verdict always ran bittersweet, but this one had turned bitter and no one had stayed long.

As she left, Caroline Julian had summed it up, her tone honed razor sharp—"A retraction? That damned thing was more like a Band-aid on the Grand Canyon."

oOo

"It was just the one time, Seeley. Generally, we're much better company and Carrie should know that; she's been out with us before." Cam was shaking her head as she laid out her surgical instruments. "Frankly, I don't know how I would have reacted had I been Brennan."

At the time he had been grateful that Brennan hadn't taken a swing at somebody.

"So, no Bones?"

Cam gave one decisive swipe of her head. "She called in, said she needed the day to work on the Renton thing." She pulled the plastic apron over her head and tied it around the back of her waist. "Angela wasn't very optimistic when I talked to her this morning. Said they had hit what seemed to be a dead end." She looked up. "No pun intended."

"But you know how Brennan is. She needs to cross the T's, dot the I's, put the little thingamabobber on the Q."

He had only wandered into the Autopsy Lab that morning when he hadn't been able to find Brennan in her office or Angela in hers. Now he wondered if he should have extended an olive branch a bit sooner.

"Angela's with Brennan?"

"No." Cam nodded toward the corpse in front of her. "She was working on the ID for our friend, here."

He huffed and leaned back against the empty autopsy table. He thought he'd been early enough to snag Bones and help her with her research. But even today they still seemed out of sync.

"She shouldn't be out there without me." He didn't like the arch of Cam's eyebrows and the knowing look. "Right. It's not a murder."

Her grin was instantly infectious. "I know why you're hanging around here, Seeley."

"I'm not hanging around." He stood away from the table. Well, he _was_ hanging around. "I'll take a look at the evidence Angela's got. See if I can make something out of it."

"You are _so_ not hanging around for that."

"It's what I do for a living, Cam."

"But that's not the only reason why you're hanging around here."

He felt somewhat like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. "Okay, Cam, why am I here besides him?" He pointed his chin at the body on the table.

Her expression told him he wasn't going to like whatever she said.

"You are here to ask me to be nice to Carrie at Wendell's party."

"Nooo." _Well, yeah. _Last night's silence had stayed for the morning as well.

"She'll be fine, Seeley. She's good with people."

He knew she was right—they had all been polite and accommodating, they had all taken their turns at taking her into their little celebration before it broke up—but it had still felt off. _Carrie had felt off._

"I just want things to go a bit better. If you could just, you know, . . . ."

"You have got to be kidding." Cam picked up a scalpel. "She should know by now we're nice people," she said as she began to slice open the corpse.

_Asking a nice person to be nicer felt, well, desperate. _"She says I fit in perfectly with her friends, Cam."

She was now gesturing with the scalpel. "Do you seriously want me _to tell _people here they should be _nice_ to your fiancée, Seeley? Is that what you want?"

He leaned back against the empty autopsy table and sighed. "No, Cam." This _did have_ the feel of something from high school. He tried a smile. "I just thought that as my oldest and dearest. . . ."

"I have a scalpel," Cam interrupted him. She cocked her head and smiled right back at him. "I like Carrie. You seem happy. Everyone has gone out of their way to make sure that she is welcome into _our little crime-solving family_." The scalpel sliced the air as Cam made her point. "Besides, it'll work out. It was just the one time under pretty trying circumstances."

"You're right. You're right."

This time the smiles were genuine. Cam turned back to the cadaver. "Good. I don't have to ask people to be nice to her."

"You don't have to ask people to be nice to whom?"

Hodgins stood at the doorway of the Autopsy lab, a beaker of a thick white liquid in hand, his question hanging in the air between them.

"Well?"

Cam, ever-sensible Cam, wasn't going to let him off the hook. Her expression and head bob told him he should just take the leap, but he hesitated.

Wrong move.

"Whom should people be nice to?" Hodgins repeated.

"Carrie." Cam shot him a look.

He scowled back at Cam and tried to redirect the conversation. "Are you serving vanilla milkshakes now?"

"Pureed maggots," Hodgins answered. "Why should we be nice to Carrie? I thought we were."

"I didn't ask anyone to be nice to Carrie."

"So you don't want us to be nice to Carrie." Hodgins was looking from Cam to him.

"It was a joke." Cam nodded at the beaker. "Is that from our friend here?"

"Wow. I thought the fact that we gave up going to the Carlyle to see Brennan get her award was a nice gesture," said Hodgins. "We were all going in the limo together." He nodded at the beaker. "Anyway, our little friends here suggest that our little friend there was high on benzoylmethylecgonine, better known as cocaine." He indicated the body on Cam's table. "The mass spectrometer doesn't lie."

Booth felt sucker punched. "What do you mean you gave up going to the Carlyle?"

"His tox screen should be interesting." Cam added. "I thought Angela asked you not to bring up the Carlyle."

"Yeah, well, I think giving up going to her best friend's big award ceremony to attend Booth's engagement party was pretty nice," Hodgins said. "Does Carrie think we're not being nice to her or something?"

"Carrie thinks we're not being nice to her?" Angela had entered the lab, catching Hodgin's last comment. "I thought we were all nice to her.

"Someone mentioned the thing about the Carlyle. . . ," Hodgins started.

Angela cut him off. "Jack, I told you not to bring it up."

"Cam brought it up."

"I did not," Cam countered.

"Wait." Booth stood and put his hands up.

"Is it because of that last time? Because man, _that_ was awkward," Hodgins added.

"I'll say," Angela said.

"I did not bring up anything about the Carlyle," Cam protested.

"I have an ID on the victim if anyone's interested." Angela looked at Cam. "I thought we all agreed, _you know_."

"Hold it. Time out." Booth put one hand over the other in a T and stood between Hodgins and Cam. He twisted around to Cam. "Cam. I just need to know what he died of," he said pointing at the body. The room had suddenly become too small.

Her expression was anything _but_ nice.

"You know," said Angela. "I bought a nice dress for the Carlyle before Brennan convinced me to go to your party. And I was 12 months pregnant at the time." She turned toward Cam. "And you weren't supposed to say anything."

"I didn't." Cam's voice rose in indignation. "It was Hodgins."

"You," Booth turned toward Hodgins. He pointed at the beaker. "Do I need to know anything more about _that_?"

"Not really. Maggots were flying high on cocaine. So was he."

"You," he said, turning toward Angela. "I'll take the ID." He held out his hand for the report. "Please."

Angela gave him a look with the report. "We're nice people, Booth. And we've been _very nice_ to your girlfriend."

oOo

Theirs was the business of uncovering secrets.

In the lab, where he found himself that night, the secrets could be deciphered by skilled hands and eyes ever probing deeper into the mysteries of the human body.

His skill lay in observing and listening.

But in so many ways, he had been blind and deaf to Temperance Brennan.

He stood in the doorway to her office really watching her for the first time in months. Each movement was graceful and economical, careful and deliberate.

He'd watched her hundreds of times over the years. But tonight, he found himself looking for the things he had missed over the months since they'd returned from overseas.

Each movement, each expression that crossed her face, each seemed so much like every other movement he had seen over the years, like every other expression he had witnessed.

And yet each seemed somehow different tonight.

He had promised Angela to keep Brennan's secret; it seemed inadequate, somehow. Brennan's big brain had outfoxed him and in a way that he would have never expected from her.

"Booth? What are you doing here?" She caught him watching her at her computer. "How long have you been there?"

Too long and not long enough he wanted to tell her. "A few minutes."

"Did you want the Pederson file?" She scooped up a folder and held it out to him.

He shook his head. "I thought I could give you a hand on Renton."

She ticked her head and scowled. "I thought you didn't have time for that." Her voice carried a bit of hesitation, a wariness.

"I helped Angela with those receipts." He smiled and stepped into the room all the while keeping his tone playful. "And you found something important about them, didn't you?"

Whatever defenses she had put up were now slowly dropping away. "Yes, you did help with those." He felt she was assessing him like she might assess a skeleton before examining the bones. "What made you change your mind?"

"I know you," he said as he pulled up the seat across from her desk. "I know you would have a good reason for wanting to follow-up on Renton."

She smirked. "Then why did you give me such a hard time about it yesterday?"

He grinned. "I think we gave each other a hard time yesterday."

That was all. She relaxed and gave the slightest nod. For whatever her reasons, she knew she had been partly to blame for yesterday's escalation from a simple request to a cold war.

"So what did you find out about good old Dave?"

She returned his smile and began to recite a story that only proved Cam's earlier assessment right—it _was_ his kind of case.

Renton's home abutted a neighborhood park and he cared for as if it were his own property. Simple.

"Wow," Booth was impressed. He looked through the receipts she handed him. "So he sold his own belongings over the years to fund improvements in the park?" He sat back. "I'm doing a pretty good job turning you into an investigator."

"It was a logical deduction," she said.

"So?"

"So what, Booth?"

While he knew she could probably give him a dozen rational explanations for how Renton's work benefited the neighborhood or the ecology or some other thing, he only wanted one answer.

"So why pursue this? Why was this so important to you?"

He knew he had touched a nerve as the gentle smile faded and the wariness had returned. "It's not strictly rational."

He waggled his eyebrows. "Neither am I."

It brought back the smile even if only temporarily. He could see her struggle as she sometimes did when she got caught acting from the heart rather than her head.

"When I was in foster care, I slept in a park one night."

"Like the one. . . ."

"I was kicked out of the home and I had no where to go, so I went to the park."

"Why?"

"It was the best place to go at the time."

"No, Bones," he said leaning forward, "I mean, why were you kicked out?"

He couldn't imagine her doing anything so disruptive to be kicked out of anywhere.

Pain suddenly colored her features. "I came in late one night. From school. I was only 3 minutes late, but they told me I would be locked out if I came in late and I was."

Her eyes caught his for a moment before returning their focus to her desk. "There was a couple who lived near the park. They brought me a blanket, let me use their bathroom the next day so. . . so I could go to school. I never saw them again because I was taken out of the home that day and moved to another."

He imagined there was so much more to the story, but she said nothing more and he did not press.

"So you thought Dave might have seen some things, been around for some kid over the years?"

"Statistically, it is possible Booth, but there's no way to know. But he and his wife lived next to that park for over 20 years."

Settling back into the chair, he studied her a moment. "Okay, so what next?"

She shrugged. "I met with the mayor. . . ."

"The mayor? Wow."

"And he was a bit reluctant to do much, even though I did point out that David Renton saved the city a substantial amount of money in maintenance and upkeep while preserving an aesthetic for the neighborhood as well as a place for children to play."

He couldn't help but laugh. "You went to the mayor? Bones, what do you expect the mayor to do? The guy took care of a park."

She nodded that slow, thoughtful nod. "Angela and I have an idea and we have a meeting with someone tomorrow who might be able to help."

Caginess had never been her strong suit, but she refused to tell him more.

So he invited her to dinner. He might not be able to thank her outright for making sure his engagement party had been populated by their friends, but he could show his gratitude.

"It's late, Booth. And since this isn't strictly about a case, shouldn't you go home to Carrie?"

It had been the new line he'd drawn between them, the new definition of partnership.

"Bones, let's not worry. . . look, can't I just take my partner out for a nice dinner? A way of, I don't know, thanking you for all the work you've done finding out about Dave Renton."

In his words were the plan's downfall. "If that were the case, Booth, then Angela should be here." She remained rooted to her chair. "Besides, that doesn't make any sense."

"Does taking you out to dinner have to make sense?"

Her mind, as it often did, was on a different plane than his own.

"Hodgins said that you want us to be nice to Carrie the next time we go out which I assume will be Wendell's party."

He froze. _She was serious_. _Dead serious._

He hadn't made a deal with Hodgins. _Damn_.

"I. . . I thought _we were_ being nice to Carrie. I. . ," she hesitated, unsure, he thought, of just how to revisit a painful memory without letting it overtake her.

"Bones, I. . . I just want Carrie to fit in with, you know, the squints." He slumped back into the chair. "It's just that it's sometimes hard for people to fit into an established group. The squints, us, we're an established group."

_If he brought up the crappy time they had at the Founding Fathers after the Kleckman trial, he didn't know how she would take it. If she would blame herself._

She was nodding, the way she did when she was trying to process the social niceties. "I can see that," she said. Then she pursed her lips, her eyes never wavering from his. "Carrie's like you, Booth. She's very good at fitting into any social situation," she said. "It's an enviable skill."

"But I like Carrie, and I can be nicer to her if that will make her more comfortable."

Her earnestness shook him and he blinked several times. "Bones, you. . . you've been great. Perfect, in fact. You don't have to do anything. You're not the problem." He stood. "Please. Let me take you out to dinner. I want to thank you for being so great with Carrie, being my partner, being the best forensic anthropologist in this world."

"That doesn't make any sense, Booth."

"You need to eat," he said, desperate to come up with something rational to persuade her. "I need to eat. Why don't we just eat together?"

In her hesitation he knew she was measuring the width of the line he had drawn between them

"_Please_."

That one word had enough weight to push her over the line.

"Okay." She stood and pulled her coat from the back of the chair. "Do I get to pick?"

"Yeah." He relaxed into a smile and placed his hand on the small of her back. "Anywhere you want to go, Bones."

oOo

How did you take the measure of one's heart?

Cam could give him the weight and size of the physical heart, but the essence? Hodgins could give him the chemical analysis of the blood and muscle and tissue in terms that would only boggle his mind. Angela could give him a rendering of its metaphorical weight, a glorious drawing that might look nothing like its physical self but show the depth and reach of its emotional wealth.

And Brennan? She could give him the place the heart held in the body, caged by bone to protect it from harm.

How did you really take the measure of one's heart?

He supposed he could count the people gathered at a neighborhood park on a mild November day.

Or the people who made the gathering possible.

"I do pretty good work, if I do say so myself," Carrie said as she wrapped her arm in his and squeezed it to her. "I don't usually write profiles on people like Dave Renton, but this one turned out pretty good."

For the 20-odd years that Dave Renton lived next to the park, he had tended it, planting flowers in the spring and raking leaves in the fall. When Carrie's story came out, the kindnesses of Renton became known as well—there to patch a skinned knee, there to push a child higher toward the clouds on a swing.

"He was just nice to people?" Parker lifted his face toward him. "And he gets a park named after him?"

Before Carrie could launch into her explanation of Renton's significant contributions to the neighborhood, Parker saw someone in the small crowd. "Can I go see Bones?"

Booth scanned the small gathering and finally caught sight of Brennan standing next to her father and Cam. "Go on," he said.

Parker exploded into a run and practically barreled into Brennan in greeting.

Booth waved at her.

"Angela's sign will go over there in the spring," Carrie was saying. "And the mayor said there's a water fountain planned over there as well. Apparently an anonymous donor. . . ."

He half-listened to the story he knew so well. Dave Renton had done little things over the years to keep a local park clean and bright and inviting to his neighbors. The little things had added up, and rather than forget the measure of his heart and allow him to fade into memory, Angela and Brennan had taken his story to Carrie who had given it to the Washington, D.C. area.

And the Renton Memorial Park was born.

"It just seems to be a better use of the fourth estate's resources," Brennan had said at the time.

Better than what she never explained.

He watched Parker practically pull Brennan and her father toward a small patch of trees and point toward the upper branches at some movement there.

He felt a tug on his sleeve. "I'm going to see if I can talk to the governor while I've got him," Carrie said as she fumbled in her pocket for a notebook. "You don't mind, do you Seeley?"

With a kiss she was off.

For a moment he simply took in the scene around him. Cam and Paul were hand-in-hand walking along a flowerbed that was fading with the turn of seasons. Parker was practically head-to-head-to-head with Brennan and Max as they were huddled over something cradled in Max' hands.

He felt a touch on his arm and turned to see Angela and Hodgins.

"We're going to take our little particulate generator home," Angela said as she leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

Seeley Joy massaged the air with her fists and burbled happily.

"It's a nice park, Ange," he said. "You did a nice thing here."

She nodded and broke out in a smile. "Yeah," she agreed, "it turned out nicely for old Dave. He's got a pretty nice park here."

Hodgins leaned in. "Max Brennan and I are going to be back tonight." He leaned in further. "We're going to spread the cremains around the park so that Dave is a permanent part of his park. Strictly illegal, but we figure no one really needs to know."

He wanted to laugh at Hodgins, the conspiracy buff creating his own conspiracy.

"You know, a day like this makes up for a lot of the bad stuff we see in the lab," Angela said as she adjusted the bundle in her arms. "Not everything, but it does give you hope. It reminds you that there are really good people in this world who don't do anything more than take care of a park so kids can play."

He considered her words as he wandered over to where Brennan was standing. Parker and Max were circling the small pond, one trailing the other as they seemed to be trying to outdo the other in finding something to discover.

"I heard there's an anonymous donor who set up a special fund for the park," he said as he sidled up to his partner. "Keep it in marigolds in perpetuity."

"Maybe daisies," she said and turned toward him, a brief smile gracing her face.

"This is nice," he said. He let his eyes take in her features as she watched her father and his son. "This was a nice thing you did. You and Angela."

She glanced at him and shrugged. "Sometimes the living have to speak for the dead, Booth. You taught me that. It's what we do in solving murders." She gave a glance backward where Carrie was at eye of the needle, weaving together a new story.

As he watched her he couldn't help thinking, _Sometimes it takes the dead, Temperance, to speak for the living._


	6. Brennan's heart

**Brennan's heart**

Ultimately, she will save his life that night.

And in doing so he will save hers.

oOo

They are chasing Mark Watley through the field when she first stumbles and he catches her and pulls her up and along with him until their prey sends another shot their way. Instinctively, he pulls her with him to the ground, takes a knee and lines up his shot.

But Watley is moving again, and he loses sight of him briefly in the growing dusk.

"You okay?" he asks and her response is a breathy one, but he only takes a moment before he is up on his feet again and crashing through the field.

The chase started at Watley's farmhouse and has taken them into this clearing, past the fields once ripe with tobacco. Brennan, ever the observer, actually looked at the map of Watley's property earlier while they were in the SUV and has suggested that he may be headed for an older farmhouse on the other side of the woods.

They had only come out to ask Watley a few questions, find out what he knew about Leslie Madison's disappearance 7 years ago. He seems to be the most cooperative of witnesses offering to do everything he can to help. Booth sees it first, but doesn't make the connection: Watley is wearing a St. Dominic medal, patron saint of astronomers. Leslie was an amateur astronomer who loved to come out to the farm country to look up at the stars and the 25-year-old woman disappeared in this area doing just that. Brennan is doing what she does, looking around the room, observing, cataloging, evaluating, when she sees something that doesn't quite fit: there's a telescope on his back porch, a model similar to the one that Leslie owned. The lens cap is cracked and dusty and she asks Watley about a constellation in the night sky. Only then does Booth make the connection to the medal and their victim. And Brennan seals Watley's status as their number one suspect when she unearths an astronomer's logbook nestled between two pornographic DVDs on his shelf. The log is in Leslie's very precise handwriting.

It happens quickly, too quickly to do much more than react. Watley grabs a potted plant from the table and flings it at Booth scattering dirt and leaves and shards before running through the back door.

Brennan is behind Booth by a few steps, keeping up with the torrid pace. Watley is a tease, only a few paces ahead of Booth all the way until they hit the forest. The difference in light between the open sky of the field and the dense canopy of the woods requires some adjustment and Booth loses sight of Watley for a moment.

He should halt the pursuit, pull out his cell phone and call for backup, but he is too pissed that Watley slipped through his fingers and because of that he won't give in. Watley is too close to let him go just yet. He pauses for a second more only to pull his backup from the ankle holster and hand that to Brennan when she catches up. She automatically fingers the safety like he's taught her. He signals for her to keep low and circle below where Watley entered the woods while he will complete the arc above their prey. It takes only seconds and they are both on the move again.

If Watley tries to veer off, either he or Brennan should be able to adjust and to follow. If Brennan is right, and he trusts her to be right, they might be funneling him toward the farmhouse and between the two of them, they can corner him there.

He considers several scenarios and thinks about simply stopping and calling for backup when he hears a gunshot.

Instinctively he crouches and calls out, "Bones?"

He shouldn't call out because it will give away his position, but he does it anyway, more worried about her safety than his own. He holds his own position a moment longer before he hears, "I'm fine, Booth."

He is now even more determined to catch Watley and he begins to pick up the pace, weaving in and out of the trees and the scrub when he finally sees what Brennan has told him about. It is the farmhouse, a stooped old woman weary and gray with neglect.

Brennan pulls out of the woods several yards away and several seconds after him.

But no Watley.

They both hear crashing in the woods behind them growing more distant and he's aggravated that the man has slipped through their grasp. He's decided: he will give up the pursuit for now; he won't risk their lives. The sun is beginning to set and they need dogs and flashlights and a lot more men than the two of them.

He also can feel the sting of scratches on his face and he knows Brennan is sporting a small slash of blood near her right eye.

Had he made the connection sooner, had he recognized the St. Dominic medal at once, he might have been able to subdue Watley at the house rather than make this mad dash across farmland and through forest. He was within an arm's length of Watley and he should have grabbed him when Brennan asked about the constellation. He is decisive while Brennan is deliberate and he should have acted quicker.

He waves Brennan over and he walks slowly toward the porch of the old building catching his breath while he pulls out his cell. It is the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do because the moment the light of the phone touches the growing gloom, it shatters in his hand. Gunshots explode around them and he pushes-pulls Brennan onto the porch and splinters the door as they crash through the old wood like a battering ram.

They land in a heap on the floor, but with the door gaping open behind them he knows it is not safe and he scrambles to his feet and pulls her up beside him to move deeper into the house. He tries to calculate where Watley might be given the sounds of the gunshots but those thoughts evaporate in a different kind of explosion as the floorboards beneath them give way and they are falling though the rotted wood before his head slams into something on the way down and everything goes black.

oOo

He wakes to Brennan practically pummeling him. "Booth! Booth! Wake up!"

It takes time to orient himself, but he is lying half submerged in water and Brennan is under him, her legs angled beneath his head holding him up.

His words are scattered as are his thoughts and Brennan has to explain it to him several times before he understands and even then he only understands in bits and pieces.

"Water . . . root cellar. . . fall. . .concussion. . . ."

He finally puts it together: he hit his head somehow on the way down through the floor of the farmhouse and now they are in a root cellar below the actual cellar.

And Brennan is sitting under him in the mud and muck and brackish water to prevent him from drowning.

He can look up through the floors they've passed through and see the night sky.

She fills him in on what she knows about Watley—she has heard movement, but not seen him; that doesn't mean he isn't still out there. She tells him about the knot on his head, just a few inches from where the scar from his brain surgery is.

Everything is slowly making sense, but his headache radiates from the lump. He tries to remember what happened at the farmhouse, tries to hold onto the images. It's more important that they get out of this subterranean mess, but he's trying to sort out the images and snippets of conversation. He needs to remember. He needs this to focus.

"What did you ask him?"

"What?"

There are probably a thousand other things to ask her at this moment, but he asks her about the last question she posed to Watley before he took off and chased them down this rabbit hole.

"At the house. Watley. What'd you ask him?"

"If he could see Ursa Minor and the Little Dipper from the porch."

"Ursa. . . ."

"Small bear."

"I know. I know, Bones." His head feels like a bear has been let loose inside his brain.

"Ursa Minor and the Little Dipper are the same constellation."

He knows this. He closes his eyes and Brennan shakes him.

"Booth. You can't fall asleep." She pleads with him. "I think you have a concussion."

She tells him how many concussions he has had and he has her repeat the information twice before it sticks in his addled brain.

She knows his medical history almost as well as he does.

"We're sitting geese, here, Booth. We have to get out of here. Watley can come back at any time."

"Silly goose. Sitting ducks." It's actually kind of funny and he starts to laugh. "Silly goose, it's sitting ducks. We're sitting ducks, you silly goose."

She pushes on him with her legs. "We need to get out of here."

It takes all of her resolve and their combined strength to push and pull him up, but it's hard as his foot is caught in something. They slip several times in the cold water, his head too big for his shoulders and one good foot is not enough to stand on, but they make it to upright positions although he is off-balance. He leans on her, uncertain he can balance the thing that is his head on one leg. They have left the stagnant water below, but its smell follows as does the clammy feeling of wet leather and denim.

His foot is caught on something and he tries to focus on that rather than his head or the stinging in his hand. Leaning on Brennan, he tries to pull himself free, but he practically pulls them both back down into the foul water with his attempts.

That's when they hear the house creaking above them, the floorboards groaning. He tries to step out of the water onto what is left of the basement floor, but he cannot. Leaning against Brennan and what's left of the floor, he tries again to pull himself free, but his ankle and foot are wedged deep in something that seems to be cemented around him.

"Gun. Bones, where's my gun?"

He pats his pockets and feels for his holster, but both are empty.

"Bones? Find my gun."

She puts something in his hand, wet and cool to his touch. It's his back up. The Colt .22.

"Keep an eye out for Watley."

She practically falls back into the water and he teeters without her there to support him, but he steadies himself, kicking water at her as he tries to peer upward and keep his balance. The action is disorienting, but he closes his eyes and stills his stomach which is revolting against the vertigo and the headache.

Her hands are around his leg and ankle and his skin is too cold to really feel anything except a sharp ache as she searches around the water. "Bones?"

"Watley. Watch for him, Booth." Her voice is steady, but he hears worry in her tone. "I need something for leverage." She searches for something to pry him loose and grabs at several pieces of wood floating nearby.

His eyes are open and he sees only a smattering of shimmering lights in the night sky. He must have been unconscious a long time for the sky to have become so dark and glittery. He tries to pull out his left foot, but all he succeeds in doing is knocking Brennan in the head with his knee.

A sharp rap on his leg reminds him to focus on what is above them. She will work on what is below.

He tells himself to focus and he tries to assess their situation. He is standing below the first floor, somewhat sheltered by part of the wooden floor of the cellar they've fallen through. Brennan is kneeling in the water, crawling around in the muckish mess, trying to find a way to free him.

They are wrapped in shadows.

She pushes at his leg and grunts as she wraps both hands around something under the murkiness and starts to churn the water.

"Shhhh!" He's heard something above and he flails at her head to get her attention.

She knows enough to keep quiet, to avoid giving away their position, so her elongated "Arghh" vibrates against his leg as she buries her face against his wet jeans and tries to dig around him. He cannot even feel what she is doing near his leg. His head throbs and sends streaks of thunder through his brain.

His legs are numb in the cold water and he cannot imagine how Brennan can kneel in it, poking and prodding beneath its surface. Looking up, he knows what it feels like to be the bullseye of a target.

He seems hopelessly cemented in place.

"Do you have a knife?"

Her soft voice is edged with desperation.

"No," he whispers back. "You aren't going to cut my leg off."

"Why would I do that? I need to pry this loose."

His head is still battling the rampaging bear. "What about your kit?"

It's back at the SUV along with her cell phone, a knife, a small tool kit. The floorboards announce that Watley is getting closer. He checks the Colt; each position in the cylinder is full save for the safety chamber. He lines up one bullet with the hammer and reaches down and pulls Brennan's head closer to his leg. He wants them to be a smaller target for their prey.

So they wait.

And wait.

The house's groans settling into the cool night air are different from the footsteps above them and he forces his battered brain to differentiate between them, read them like an audio map of Watley's position. He can feel Brennan's hands still at work beneath the surface of the water, feeling around his twisted leg, digging beneath the water, searching out a way to free him. He ignores the cramp in his leg and the activity around it.

Looking up is dizzying and he leans against Brennan who is doing her best to hold him up as she kneels in the muddy water. He trusts her hands to know what they are doing. He trusts her to free him.

All at once the water around them becomes alive as bullets whiz around throwing up little splashes of muck. He hears Brennan gasp as the bullets rain down. He looks up and ignores the stinging in his arm as a bullet slices through flesh. He aims.

It is a gamble, but it is the best he can do since he cannot see Watley so he squeezes off a shot. A spray of splintered wood rains down on them. He sees a small glint of light and that is all he needs; the next shot hits something. He can hear the soft exhale of air, a grunt, then a thud as something hits the floor above them and a shower of dirt and splinters hits them below.

For several seconds he's wiping dirt from his face and trying not to fall over. He looks up, then listens, but all he can hear is his own breathing and the water churning below. Brennan is still battling whatever is holding him rooted to that spot. "Booth, can you. . . ?"

She grunts then begins to push on his leg and pull at something around it when another storm of bullets pelts the gunk around them and her words are lost in the cacophony.

Suddenly he is free and falling and Brennan is pulling at him and they scramble to safer ground, and they crouch in a small space beneath the floor of the cellar.

Testing his legs, they seem to belong to someone else because he cannot control them well. "My legs," he grunts, "my legs need to work." Brennan begins to rub them down trying to get the blood to warm them, trying to feel for injuries. His ankle throbs and Brennan's face is smudged. Her intensity never wavers.

She touches something on his leg and at first it stings then something slices through his body and he practically convulses with the pain. He stills her hands with his. Her hands are ice.

"Booth," she whispers and points, but he signals to her to be quiet. He listens for movement above them. For something. They are sitting ducks for Watley, they are silly geese. He closes his eyes to help him focus, and Brennan twists his jacket and shakes him to keep him from passing out and falling over. He opens his eyes.

He's figured it out, figured out Watley, figured out a way to even the odds. Without hesitating, he locates a chunk of wood and throws it to where they were. Another hail of bullets pelts the water sending up sprays of water. When the storm ends, he staggers back into the muck, points the gun in Watley's direction and fires.

This time the thud is clearly a whole body smacking wood above them. He sees a silhouette haloed by the night sky and feels Brennan next to him, holding him up. When the silhouette moves just a fraction, he fires once more into the shadow's center.

There is no more movement.

oOo

Brennan becomes his crutch, supporting him as they slowly stumble their way up a rickety stairway and outside. His head throbs as the bear paws inside his brain. When they finally kick their way out of the cellar door, she turns him toward the way they came and they begin a stumble step back to the first farmhouse. With his arm slung around her shoulders, they lean against each other. The bear clings to his leg, digging its claws into the muscle while another continues to paw intermittedly at his brain and arm. It takes them forty minutes to make a trek that had only taken a fraction of the time before but they are guided by moonlight and a vague sense of direction and he cannot move faster with his throbbing leg.

When they get to the SUV, both are shivering with cold and exhaustion. He is the first to notice that Watley has left them an additional insult to their injuries—two tires of the SUV are flat. Each "damn" that he exhales causes the bear inside his skull to rage and he forces himself to stillness to ease the pain so that they can evaluate the situation. But Brennan has already retrieved her cell phone and is dialing emergency services. She leans against the SUV and he wonders if she's so weary she cannot stand any longer. He braces himself against the SUV and looks upward at the sky and looks for Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper. Brennan gives someone their location and names and she says something extraordinary: "We need an ambulance immediately for two gunshot victims."

Then she collapses to the ground.

oOo

For the next 52 hours he feels like one of Parker's science fair projects. He can't imagine how Brennan feels in ICU.

Cam and Hodgins keep him informed of how Brennan is doing two floors above him. While the doctors and nurses have tried to explain her condition, it is Cam who cuts through the mumbo jumbo and simply spells out the worst of it: she took two bullets and lost a lot of blood.

Booth knows there was nothing simple about what Brennan did.

Max stops by on the first day in hospital and thanks him for saving his daughter's life. Booth tells him the whole story, tells Max how Brennan saved him.

He's seen Max Brennan in many guises, in many moods. He doesn't wholly trust the man, but he trusts the emotion in the man's eyes when Max wipes at them and nods his head and says, "I'm still glad it was you who was there with her."

It is Hodgins who supervises the retrieval of Brennan's mother's ring from the pit of muck. Booth hears the story later, much later. Brennan mentioned the ring to Angela, mentioned that she had lost it as she tried to pry the debris and rock and mud from Booth's leg to free him. Angela had made it her mission—actually Jack's—to get it back.

"Had to sift through barrels of that stuff before I found it," he says simply.

Hodgins also finds the St. Dominic's medal on a broken gold chain.

Hodgins will take the ring back to the lab and clean it using one of his microscopes to make certain the ring retains no trace evidence that it had been sacrificed as she tried to pry Booth loose.

The 52 hours in the hospital, the 52 hours apart, practically drive him crazy. The reports from his friends are meant to ease his mind, assuage his concern, but he needs to see her for himself.

After he is discharged, Booth makes a U-turn and heads for the elevators to see his partner.

When he sees her for the first time in 52 hours, she is not wearing the ring. She is sleeping, sedated, her skin pale, almost translucent. Her hands are still raw and red and bruised, yet he takes one gingerly and wraps his hands around it before placing a kiss on it. Tubes run from her right arm to several machines monitoring her vitals.

"Cam?" He calls for Cam to re-enter the room she's just vacated for him and Carrie. Angela follows her in. Max shadows the doorway to her room peering in.

They have ignored the duty nurse and squeeze in five visitors. Cam explains in hushed tones that doctors will not perform surgery on Brennan until a small fever breaks. They are keeping a close watch on her vitals which are strong despite everything. Except for discussing her case with the doctors and Cam, or asking about Booth several times, she has been resting, mostly sleeping.

They will not operate on her for another two days and they will not discharge her for another three.

It takes Cam and Angela and Max to convince him to follow Carrie's advice to go home.

Only after Carrie has exhausted the list of things she's done at the apartment to help him convalesce and they are riding home in silence does he remember. It is something from his time as an altar boy and celebrating feast days of saints; St. Dominic is the patron saint not only of astronomers, but also of scientists.

He sends a prayer of thanks toward the heavens for an atheist scientist.

oOo

He doesn't know how they got to this point, but they have and he talks louder as if that will somehow magically make her see his side of the argument.

"Was that one of your substitutions, replace the rational with something irrational?" He leans in. "Because if it was it was a damned stupid time to do it."

She is only a day out of surgery and he is already bickering with her.

"No, of course not."

"Well, it sure seemed like it from where I was sitting."

"You could barely stand, Booth. And sitting wasn't appropriate given the fact that you were severely concussed and. . . . "

"I get the picture."

"Would it have changed anything?" She is sitting up in bed, but despite the anger propelling her, she looks frail against the white linens. "We still had to deal with Watley. We still had no way of calling for help. Would it have changed anything had I told you I was shot?"

"I could have gone for help." The doctors tell Cam who tells him that Brennan risked death as she was walking back toward the farmhouse and it unnerves him. It unnerves him more that he had not known she was injured. "I could have walked back. . . ."

"Walked? Booth, you were injured. You had a concussion. You were shot. Your foot and ankle were. . . ."

"But you, _you_ should have gone for help immediately after we fell into that cellar. _You_ should have gone back to the Sierra and called for help."

"You could have drowned, Booth. It only takes six inches. . . ."

"But no, no, you have to be Miss Independent. . . ."

"Who is Miss Independent? What the hell are you. . . ."

"Hey! Enough!"

They have both forgotten that Carrie is in the room. They have not bickered like this in front of Carrie before. She is already annoyed with him for dragging her back to the hospital to see Brennan after her surgery. Carrie is already annoyed with him for not taking his pain medication, for not resting like he should at home.

Brennan is also annoyed with him. His is a losing argument, but it makes no difference. He wants her to know she doesn't have to do anything heroic for him. He wants her to know that she doesn't have to risk her life or her hands or anything for him.

He wants her to know that he would put himself in danger again for her.

Carrie doesn't understand this. She doesn't understand _them_.

And she is annoyed with him. Probably annoyed with _them_.

"Enough, Seeley. Enough. Temperance needs her rest," she says, pulling on his arm, "as you do. We're going. Say goodbye, Seeley."

He wants to yell at Brennan some more and tell her she was a damned fool to risk her life like that for him. He wants her to yell back because he will know that she is on the mend.

And he wants to draw her into his arms and hold her and hear her heartbeat against his chest to be sure.

But Carrie is waiting. She is the woman who loves him and will marry him. The woman in the bed will die for him, but will not love him.

He leaves with Carrie.

oOo

After he has climbed the stairs to his apartment, step-by-agonizing step, after he has agreed to take his pain medication and has plopped down in front of the TV, after Carrie disappears into the kitchen and he hears plates and pans and the refrigerator door opening, he realizes that there are more silences between them now than before.

Before, they used to fill the silences with talk or laughter; before, he couldn't wait to wrap his arms around her, kiss her, love her; before, he only wanted to feel her near him.

He knows that all couples go through various levels of intensity. He has convinced himself that this is one of their less intense times.

That will change.

He knows that Carrie was—_is_—frightened by what happened. The concussion, the gunshot wound, the ankle injury. Before all the scars on his body were merely stories.

This is real.

Somehow Carrie convinced someone from the newspaper to take her to the crime scene and she saw for herself the old farmhouse and the rotted floorboards and the pit that he and Brennan landed in. She has seen where they were trapped. Where Brennan took two bullets while trying to pry him loose.

Where Watley was shot and killed.

In the light of day he is sure it looks different than he remembered.

He calls for Carrie and she comes from the kitchen with a plate in hand.

"What? What is it now?"

They haven't really fought before. They've disagreed, but they were merely differences of opinion that they agreed to disagree on.

This is different.

"What? What the hell do you want to do now?"

He wants to talk. He wants to assure her that he is fine. That he will heal and they can put this behind them.

"Talk? You want to talk now? You want to talk to me or _to her_?"

What does that mean? he asks.

"What the hell do you think it means?"

How does he know? He can't read her mind. He wants to know what she is thinking.

"You could have died," she screams at him. "By all rights, you should have died. Both of you. You were lucky, Seeley. Damned lucky."

He knows that the technicians and other FBI agents have scoured Watley's farm and have evidence linking him to Leslie Madison's murder. Seven years ago he had been dismissed as a suspect, but in that time he had become bold and sloppy. He had set out Leslie's belongings like trophies of his kill.

He does not want to think of the trophies Watley would have taken from him or Brennan.

Instead, Booth wants Carrie to understand that he had an advantage; he had his training and his wits.

And he had Brennan with him.

She throws the plate that shatters against the floor.

And she tells him what is on her mind. She tells him everything. How scared she was when she got the call from the hospital. That Cam called her. How scared she was driving herself to the hospital, not knowing how truthful Cam had been. _He's been shot, but it's only a flesh wound._ _He's got a leg wound, a few other injuries. The concussion is the worst of it._ Getting to the hospital and seeing everyone else there ahead of her. Like they were called before her: Angela and Jack and Cam and Max. And Angela hugging her. Then being hugged and reassured by each one of them. Then hearing the story in bits and pieces. Hearing how _she_ was there. How they ran after a bad guy. How he shot at them. How they fell through the rotten floorboards of an old building. How he could have drowned in the water in the basement. How he hit his head and she wouldn't leave him. How she wouldn't leave him because he would have passed into a coma and died. How she kept trying and kept trying to free him.

How she almost died saving him.

"Don't you think that I could go one day without hearing about _her_?"

She reduces Brennan to a pronoun; Carrie will not use her name.

"Bones is my partner."

Carrie is on the losing side of the argument, but she argues anyway. She wants to be his partner. His wife. That's a partnership. A damned important one. They are building a life together. That's what he wants. What they want.

She knows what Brennan did and she is grateful. She really is. She is glad that he has a partner who would be protective of him. She is glad that they are both safe.

But how long will she continue to be his partner?

How long will he continue to risk his life and _their life_ together?

How long will he continue to look at _her_ that way?

His feelings for Brennan are now on trial and he argues with her. He argues that he's known Brennan years, that they have worked together for years, that he cannot easily dismiss that time.

"And you are in love with her."

The words are meant to damn him as an accusation is meant to drive the guilty to confess.

And he does the only thing he can do. He admits the truth even if it is not wholly true.

Yes, he loves Brennan. He loves her as a partner because that is all they can ever be. Yes, he loves Brennan as a friend. Love between them does not have the infinite power of possibilities because their love is finite. It has lines that intersect and confine it to boxes. They are only partners. Friends.

He loves Carrie as a man loves a woman who loves him. That is a partnership of a different kind. A better kind. A deeper kind.

It is infinite.

Between the tears and the anger and the fear, there is a need to prove his love and he takes her into his arms and he holds her until the sobs subside. Then he kisses her. Kisses her until she can kiss him back. Kisses her until he can take her into the bedroom and make love to her.

When they finish and she lies in his arms and the tears are forgotten, he realizes something profound and unsettling. This is more than just a level of intensity.

He realizes that making love to Carrie proves nothing.


	7. Mirror, Mirror

**Mirror, Mirror**

_**Author's Note: **__ Thanks for hanging in there. This is it. _

He knew exactly who to blame.

He was staring back at him in the mirror.

oOo

It had been building for some time. As New Year's Day approached, they seemed to be more in a holding pattern than a wedding track. The silences became longer; the looks less about longing and wonder and more about questions unasked and unanswered.

In the end, he wouldn't attribute it to one big thing, but a multitude of little things. And even then he wasn't sure.

"It's not unusual for people about to enter into a marriage, a commitment that you, someone like you, would take very, very seriously, to have some last minute questions," Sweets had suggested. "It's a big step. But open and honest communication will certainly alleviate any concerns you might have."

The advice had been good. In fact, he was getting words of encouragement from people he hadn't expected to.

"Value each morning you wake up beside her," Max Brennan had offered. "And be thankful for each night. Remember that after the party, you still have to work at it."

But in the end, words hadn't been enough.

Or maybe in the end, there just weren't enough words.

oOo

He had looked up from the hockey game, the Flyers down by a goal and looking uninspired on the ice when he finally asked. He'd been meaning to ask the question for some time that evening.

"Is there something wrong?"

Carrie had looked up from her laptop and seemed to squint at him. And she said nothing.

He tried again. "Is there something that still needs to be done for the wedding?"

She returned his gaze with one of her own. Then she asked a question he couldn't answer.

"Am I just going to become a habit? Someone you come home to because I just happen to be here?"

He didn't need Sweets to tell him that that question needed an answer. But he really had no response.

With a single huff, she set the laptop on the coffee table and strode into the bedroom.

Not knowing what else to do, he followed.

"What kind of a question is that?" They were professionals whose jobs required the skillful act of asking questions and listening to the answers. But apparently he hadn't been asking the right questions in the last several weeks or he hadn't been listening.

It had been hard to listen to silence.

He reached out to pull her into his arms, but she stepped back and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"I'm not sure I can do this anymore, Seeley. I really don't think I can."

"What? You have to help me out here, Carrie, and tell me what it is that we're talking about, hon."

Had he been honest with himself, he would have seen it. But sometimes, he reminded himself later you can't see what's right in front of you because you're too busy focusing on something else.

It was something he had warned himself about as an investigator.

The silences had grown longer and deeper ever since. . . . "Look, if it's about the Watley, case, I can tell you that there's no reason to think that happens often."

"She's in love with you."

"Who?"

It was a stupid question even though he generally subscribed to the belief that there were few, if any, stupid questions. Especially in Jeffersonianland. But the moment he saw the expression on Carrie's face, he realized his mistake.

"Caroline Julian, for God's sake. Who the hell do you think I mean, Seeley?"

He took in a deep breath. "We've been through this, Carrie. I've been upfront about Bones. I haven't hidden anything from you."

"I know." Her voice was soft and low and sad. "I know. And she's been supportive despite the fact that she's in love with you."

The words hit him in the chest. "No. Bones doesn't love me. Not that way."

"Have you looked? Have you spent much time with her?" The sound that came out of her mouth was half a laugh and half a cry. "I _haven't_ and I _know_. She's in love with you. _That way._"

He hadn't been spending much time with Bones since the Watley shooting. He'd tried to be there for her, show her his gratitude, let her have his shoulder to lean on as she recovered, but she'd shooed him away.

Told him he should be spending his free time with Carrie.

"No. I love you. _I love you_." This time he succeeded in folding Carrie into his arms as he tried to ward off this conversation. "I want to marry you."

"And that's the problem, Seeley Booth. You do love me. You do want to marry me."

"But you love her, too."

_This is not the conversation to have two weeks before your wedding,_ he told himself.

"Bones is in Egypt, Carrie. And even if she were right here in this room, you couldn't convince me that I love her the way that I love you."

Carrie pushed out of his embrace. He stood frozen reminded of another time. Outside Sweets' office. Outside the Hoover.

_That night._

His heart had mended since then, it had to, it just had to, because he didn't want to feel again what he felt then.

"She's half a world away and still she's here."

"This is just last-minute jitters. We'll talk this out and we'll be fine."

"Temperance Brennan is there," she said, pointing at his head. "And there." She pointed at his heart. "And I'm in those places, too. I'm just not sure I want to share them with her anymore."

"Carrie. . . . ."

"No. Listen to me. I've been through this before. My ex decided he hadn't finished dating and he took every opportunity to keep on dating whenever I was out of town. I swore I'd run the other way rather than go through the humiliation of that again."

"With Temperance, I know it's different. I know you. Neither one of you would act on your feelings. Hell, you've known each other for what 6, almost 7 years, and you've never slept together. I know that if we get married, you'll never act on it. You're both too honorable." She paused and looked as if she were about to say something more. "For all her 'monogamy isn't good for the species' crap, she would honor our marriage because she knows just how much it would hurt you to do otherwise. I know that."

"Carrie, honey. . . ."

"No!" Anger now propelled her words and charged the slap that exploded against his face. It only stung a bit, but it was enough. "No! Wake up, Seeley. I won't share. I don't love you enough to share. You're proof that someone can be in love with two people at once. But we don't each get half the love. We only get part of it. And I don't even get the big portion."

"I want a guy who wants just me. _Just me._ I don't want to be the second choice because the first choice is too scared or too uncertain or too whatever to act. I can't do that. I deserve more. You deserve more."

There it was. There should be tears. Or pain. Or something.

It was some sort of weird paradoxical thing. Same action, same result, but he kept doing it anyway hoping something different would happen.

And the insanity of it all was he felt relief mixed in with the pain.

"I don't want to be the habit. The woman you wake up to because you couldn't have the woman you wanted. I can't be the consolation prize. I've been in that situation; I've been second best and I hate it."

"I'm used to being the first in line for the story. First in line for everything. I won't settle for being second, Seeley." They stood only feet away, but her words confirmed that they were really miles apart. "I won't settle for being second."

"I don't love you enough to march into hell to watch you marry someone else," she said. "And I don't love you enough to march into hell knowing you'd rather _be_ with someone else."

oOo

The guest list was short, but making the calls was still difficult.

He called Bones first, left a message on her answering machine at home for her return from Egypt. It was short, simple: "Carrie and I aren't getting married on the first. We called it off. I'll see you when you get back. Or not. I might take off for a while. Hell, it works for you. Anyway, I don't want to hear how marriage is some archaic whatever either. Just. . . just, I'll see you."

Pops and Jared were sympathetic. He half-expected Pops to give him an "I told you so," but he'd listened, asked him if he was okay, told him he'd have to get back on the bike soon enough. "And talk to Temperance, Shrimp. Let her be there for you."

Jared had been uncharacteristically philosophical. "The great universe telling you it wasn't meant to be maybe this is," he'd said.

"What? Who are you? Yoda?"

"No, Seels, it's just. . . . I did tell you Carrie was serious about this. She was serious about you."

What could he say to that? He knew what Carrie thought. They'd talked for an hour or more after they called it off. Then she had packed up some of her belongings and left for a friend's place. The next day when he came home from work, there was almost nothing left behind except for that yogurt she liked in the refrigerator and the scent of her perfume in the apartment.

"Jared, it was just one of those things. . . ."

"That didn't work out. I know. Look who's getting all cinemaplex on me." He could hear Padme's voice in the background and Jared talking to her, telling her his brother had called off the wedding. He hung on the line waiting for Jared's return and wondered how he'd gone so far and still ended up in the same place. "Look, you want to meet somewhere or something? Come over here and Padme can whip up some Indian food to set your mouth on fire so you won't think about everything else?"

He'd declined, not sure if he wanted to be witness to his brother's version of "happily ever after" when his own had been so decisively shattered.

"You know, Seels, Carrie was trying. She really was. She was trying to get you to see only her. That's why she did what she did."

"The engagement? Yeah, I know."

"No. _The engagement party_, Seeley. Doesn't matter now, but Carrie knew what date Tempe's award night was. Picked the same night on purpose."

oOo

As he made call after call, he thanked God for the invention of answering machines and voicemail. When he hit the middle of the alphabet, he was also glad he got Hodgins rather than Angela. She would have been sympathetic, maybe more compassionate than he could stand right then, so Hodgins was just easier to deal with.

"You need anything? Want me to call people for you?" Hodgins had asked. "Look, Booth, if you need anything, anything at all. . . ."

"No. Just got one or two more calls to make. Don't really need anything right now."

"Look, man, things will work out," Hodgins had said. "I've been where you are. Sun will rise again tomorrow, although it will be a bit overcast from the weather reports, and you'll start to feel better bit by bit."

"You're almost beginning to sound like an optimist, Hodgins."

"It's just. . . living with these two, my kid, Angela. . . ," Hodgins paused and Booth could hear the sounds of Christmas music in the background and a trill of laughter, ". . . it just changes your perspective on things, man. . . . You'll get there. You'll find it."

oOo

For days after the broken engagement he repeated a routine of going to work and returning home that gave him no real relief from the deep sense of failure that hung around him. Christmas came and went with some joy at the excitement in Parker's eyes, but little else had pulled him from his funk. When Sweets cornered him one day, tried to talk to him about the broken engagement, he'd protested that he was fine and put him off as best he could.

Cam finally broke through and took him out to dinner one night while they were working the Throckton case. "You need to see some light, Seeley. You're turning into a mushroom."

So he went out with his friend and made small talk, all the while wondering what insanity had brought him to putting everything on the line and getting his heart smashed to bits again.

"It's kind of like getting shot, Seeley," Cam had said after they ordered a second round of drinks.

"Cam, I've been shot, blown up, stabbed. . . hell, it's not like that at all. It feels worse somehow."

"Okay, okay, maybe it's a bad analogy, Seeley." She'd been trying all that evening to get him to open up, to say something more than the canned responses he'd been using whenever someone would try to express their sympathy. "But maybe it isn't. You get shot and it hurts like hell. Burns like. . . ."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, cutting her off, "I get it."

"Then the pain lessens; you learn to deal with it."

"Or they pump you full of the good stuff," he said, grinning, trying to turn it toward a joke.

"You can anesthetize yourself, sure." She sat back in her seat and smiled softly. "Eventually you heal. The scars are there, the reminders are there, but eventually they fade. And somehow, after all that, we want to get right back in there and try again. And you will."

"You will, Seeley."

It made sense. All the advice people were throwing at him made sense. But it didn't seem to help. "Where are you getting this from, Cam? A squintern?"

She laughed and shook her head. "I was just trying to put it in terms that you'd understand, Seeley. I _have_ been spending too much time around her interns these days." She considered him for some time. "Have you talked to her lately?"

"Who? Bones?" He shook his head and toyed with his drink. "No. She's in Egypt doing her family thing. Never thought she'd go on some family vacation with Max and Russ and a whole brood of Brennans."

"She has you to thank for that, Seeley."

"Thank? She might need a vacation from her vacation when she gets back." He really couldn't imagine Bones in Egypt or anywhere, really, with a whole tribe of Brennans exploring mummies and sphinxes and pyramids. Somehow he expected her in the middle of a jungle fighting off a tribe of pygmy warriors.

"It's nirvana for her, Seeley; she likes mummies. Everything else, she'll manage." He had the feeling that the long pauses and the intense stares were Cam's way of considering if she wanted to brave talking to him about Carrie.

So he dove in for her.

"She said we were getting to be like two old comfortable slippers." There had to be some truth to it because he felt like he had been stomped on by Carrie. He sipped at his drink before he could continue.

"She didn't want to be a consolation prize, Cam." He liked how Cam simply leaned forward and said nothing as he poured out the ache. "I was hoping it was right, that she was the right one, that I was making the right decision, but. . . ." he stopped, uncertain that saying it out loud would make it less painful, make him feel less foolish.

"You want something so much that you start believing in it, even when there are signs it's not quite what you thought it was." Cam nodded as he finished and reached out to pat his hand. "We've all been there, Seeley."

"So now what?" He had visions of simply growing older and dying alone, loved but unloved. "I can't get it right, Cam. I thought it was going to work. But I can't get it to work somehow."

Cam reached out and covered his hand with hers. "How about this? Instead of being alone on one of the biggest date nights in the free world, why not come over and spend New Year's Eve with Paul and Michelle and me? Michelle will have her date and you can chaperone. You'll like that. I'm sure we can watch some sappy old movie and eat popcorn and miss midnight entirely. Probably just fall asleep." She smiled and cocked her head. "You won't even have to get dressed up."

He declined, too wrapped up still in his misery to share it with others quite yet. When he left her for the evening after hailing her a cab, he hugged her and thanked her for her friendship. "Don't worry, Cam. My New Year's resolution is to quit picking at things and just let the scars form."

oOo

He'd gone to bed after midnight came and went and the new year promised nothing more than to be much like the old one. For several minutes he lay in bed and counted his blessings—something Hank had instilled in him for each New Year's—and he sent a silent prayer of thanks to God for his friends and family and a last wish for health and happiness and love for Carrie before shutting his eyes and giving in to sleep.

The next morning started lazy and almost directionless. He'd given little thought to doing much more than lounging around his apartment in his sweats and T-shirt, watching football and ordering in a pizza or some such fare. Hank had taught him that New Year's Day should be a time to set things right, get his house in order, but he didn't have the strength for any heavy-duty soul searching; he'd done enough of that already. Rebecca had called and switched his cancelled wedding day with the weekend—her own kind of consolation prize for a man who was still feeling a bit wounded. It had been a kindness he had not expected, an extra day to spend with his son.

Most of his close friends knew to leave him alone and he expected the day to pass in relative silence save for the football games playing on TV. When noon came and went, he marked the occasion of his almost wedding with opening his first bottle of beer and debating about which neighborhood pizza place would get his business when he heard a knock at his door. He muted the TV and opened the door to the first surprise of the New Year.

"Bones?"

She was red with the cold and carrying a cardboard box that he quickly took from her.

"What are you doing here?" He caught himself peppering her with questions while all she seemed to want to do was take off her coat and warm herself.

"I'm not used to the cold," she said simply. "At least not of late."

He set the box on the coffee table and beckoned her to sit down on the couch while he drew an afghan over her shoulders.

"How was Egypt?" he asked as he headed for the kitchen to get her some coffee.

"Hot. It was in the 90s during most of our. . . ."

"No, I meant, how was the trip? Did you have a good time, Bones? Pick up some souvenirs, hit some of the tourist traps, meet a few mummies?"

Understanding hit her and she nodded slowly, warming her hands on the coffee mug he offered. "The trip went well. We didn't find any tourists trapped, but we had a guide from the museum with us for almost a week and were able to see a great deal of the sights without going through the regular protocols."

He sat beside her. "Wow. They gave you the VIP treatment, eh? Must have impressed your brother and dad."

Her smile was slow in coming, but it seemed to warm the room. "Yes, I think my brother and father were quite impressed with the VIP treatment. The girls got to see some things in the palaces and behind the scenes at the museums. Amy said that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I think it's possible the girls might return to Egypt sometime in the future."

He listened as she recounted some of the highlights of the trip. Just the thought of the Brennans on vacation together made him chuckle.

"What?"

"I'm. . . just, I am amazed by you. Taking your family on a trip halfway around the world. Over Christmas, no less." He had missed her, missed this, and he still felt a bit too raw from Carrie to trust himself to say more. He turned toward the box. "What'd you bring me?"

"That? That's from Wong Foo's. I don't know what's exactly in there. Sid made the selection."

"Wow." He quirked his mouth. "Sid doesn't open until later. New Year's hangover and all."

"He opened up for you. Well, me and you." She paused. "I thought that Chinese might be good. It usually made me feel better when you brought it over."

The box revealed a slew of Sid's best dishes and he opened each cardboard container and reveled in the contents. Brennan rose as he did that and pointed toward the kitchen as if for permission before he nodded and watched her take the few steps in that direction.

It struck him that he couldn't remember the last time Brennan had been in his apartment. A few times she had stopped by to pick him up, but they had never really resumed their familiar routine of eating at his place since well before their trips to Afghanistan and Indonesia.

She came back with another mug of coffee and napkins.

"Still cold?"

She shook her head. "No, not so much, now. I did have to park a block away." She took another sip of the coffee. "I'm afraid I'm also a bit jet lagged."

He considered her. "You didn't have to come over here, Bones. I would have been fine. I was actually going to order some pizza."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know how much you wanted this. To be married."

"Yeah, well. You want it to be right. And it should be." He let loose a long sigh. "It just wasn't right for either of us."

"I am sorry, Booth."

In her words was a well of sincerity; she wouldn't say something unless she meant it and it touched him. They dug into the food and ate, the muted television playing the football game interrupted by commercials that seemed somehow better without sound.

As he was nearing the bottom of a carton of Peking **duck**, Brennan broke the companionable silence. "Neither one of us is very good at picking a romantic partner, Booth."

It wasn't what he was expecting. "What?"

"Well, objectively speaking, neither one of us has had a long-term romantic relationship lasting more than a few months."

"I wouldn't say that an 11-month relationship is just a few months, Bones."

"But was it successful? Are you married as you intended?"

Whatever comfort and peace of mind he had garnered from her presence had shattered. "Why did you come over here, Bones? To make me feel worse?"

"No," she said, "I'm just saying that if you look at my romantic endeavors. . . ."

"Endeavors?"

"Liaisons, trysts. . . ."

"_Trysts_. That's a word."

"None of them could be measured in units of time longer than a few months and none could be measured in years."

"We know, Bones. You suck at relationships."

"Even ours?"

It was a fair question, but he _was_ a little pissed that she was bringing this up now, today, the same day he was to have been married. He knew it was just her way to steamroll into a subject, but it didn't mean he had to like it and it didn't mean he had to be nice to her when she did it.

"Our partnership is different. It works. _Most_ of the time."

"Most of the time?" He was having a hard time trying to read her. He didn't know where she was taking this. _Any of this._

"Most of the time. It works. We work." He paused and realized something. "It works, _we work_ as partners, Bones, despite everything. Nothing really gets in between us for very long."

"I would also maintain that we have a high level of trust in our partnership." She hesitated. "Trust is an essential components of our relationship. We've had _years_ of trust."

She might have slipped into a scientific tone, but he knew she meant it more personally.

"Yeah. Thanks, Bones." He held her eyes with his and hoped she knew just how much he appreciated some little token of what she felt.

But she was off again. "Whereas in your romantic relationships. . . ."

"Whoa. Stop right there."

"Why, Booth? How long was your romantic relationship with Rebecca?"

He told her.

"Cam? Tessa?"

He gave her the length of each—none of them lasting more than in units of time measureable in months rather than years—and realized she had a point.

"I'm just saying, Booth, that neither one of us is particularly adept with romantic relationships."

"You _did_ come over here to be a pain in the ass, didn't you?"

"You are better than I am in such relationships, but nonetheless, if you were being completely objective, you would have to admit that you have been no more successful in romantic relationships than I have been."

"Not after looking at it like. . . ." He groaned and set the carton he'd been navigating back on the coffee table. "You have a point or did you just come here to feed me then give me indigestion?"

She was grinning. She actually was grinning at him.

"I got you something."

He watched her as she went to her coat that was draped across a chair and retrieved something from the pocket.

"Chinese, piss me off, present," he heaved a sigh. "What next, fireworks between my toes or something?"

She stood across from him in front of the TV and he realized he really couldn't read her as well as he once could. Her expression was almost impish, something he would never have ever associated with Temperance Brennan. He wondered if jet lag had turned her brain cells sideways. "Here."

The wrapping gave way quickly and he opened the box beneath to reveal a small pyramid inside. He recognized what it was immediately.

He squished it in his fist.

"Hey, that's cool. A stress ball pyramid."

"Well, it's not really a ball. . . ."

"Yeah, I got it." It was an odd present from her. "Thanks."

She rejoined him on the couch as he flattened the pyramid in his hand, then watched it as it seemed to re-inflate. It _was_ cool. "Sweets doesn't have one of these," he said as he squeezed it. "The incredible changeable pyramid."

That grin had returned. "What did you mean by 'the infinite power of possibilities?'"

"What?"

"You told Jared that love was about 'the infinite power of possibilities.' I just want to know what you meant by that."

He sighed. _She really had just come over to be a pain in the ass._ And did she bring him a stress ball, _correction_, pyramid, to take the sting out of her observations? _If it were anyone else. . . ._ "What do you think?" he said tiredly.

"Well, infinite would suggest that there is no end and combined with possibilities, I would conclude that it means that all kinds of love are endorsed or feasible in this scenario: homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, pansexuality. . . ."

"What's that?"

"A sexual orientation characterized by the potential for attraction toward people regardless of their gender identity. . . ."

"I get it."

". . .Transexuality . . . ."

"Okay, okay."

"But the combination of 'infinite power' is confusing since there is no such. . . ."

_She really had come back from Egypt and had come over to knock down his vision of love._ He listened as she dissected his words and he found them empty and wanting.

Just like his love life.

He'd said that line years ago, probably heard it from someone and thought it sounded cool, and his brother had repeated the story at the engagement party and while she could turn something pure and romantic into chop suey, he wasn't going down without a fight. "It means what it says, Bones," he interrupted her. "'The infinite power of possibilities' means with love all things are possible. It's not just about sex."

"Isn't that a bastardization of Matthew 19:26? With God all things are possible?"

"Bastardization? What? No. Of the Bible? Where do you get these things? Love makes things possible. Everything is possible if you love someone. Or it seems possible. I realize that love doesn't fit into your world of shiny scientific gizmos, but love gives you a sense of power that seems limitless. You feel like you can do things that you normally couldn't do. It's like a little nuclear engine that powers your imagination and just makes you feel like you can. . . hell, I can't explain it any better than to say that with love all things are possible." He looked at her and realized that that grin was back. "So you pick today of all days to shoot down my concept of love. What do you want to do next? Club the Easter bunny?"

"No, Booth. I'm just trying to understand what you mean."

"All right. It means. . . ," her look was disconcerting, ". . . it means that things are possible. Love makes things possible."

"Like changing your mind," she said.

She was confusing the hell out of him. "What?"

"Like changing, or changing one's mind. Love makes that possible."

"Yes." _Yes_.

She was grinning at him. Not quite Mona Lisa and certainly not a Cheshire cat grin, but a grin. One he could not read. Then she did the most extraordinary thing.

She leaned over and kissed him.

It was not one of those movie kisses in which the music swells and builds as the kiss lengthens and deepens. No. It was a meeting of lips. A beginning of something. A promise of more.

When she pulled away, she was grinning. Still.

"What?" His fog was lifting.

"You said that love has the power to change people. I'm not entirely sure I believe it is as limitless as you suggest, Booth, but I would have to agree that love does have the effect of giving people the confidence to try to be a greater part of the world. A greater part of other people's lives. To take risks. Perhaps there is a possibility for more because of love."

And she did something miraculous.

She kissed him again.

This kiss approached the movie kisses. It still had a ways to go, but it was longer, deeper. He tasted her on his lips and he craved more when she released him.

She had just gambled. On him. On _them_.

"I hope this isn't just one of your irrational acts, Bones." He leaned his forehead against hers. "I really, really don't."

"It's very irrational, Booth. Extremely irrational." He could hear her breathing as his own heartbeat pulsed in his ears. He caught a whiff of her scent, something both exotic and familiar. He leaned forward to repeat the miracle.

"Now go get dressed."

He had just begun to feel a surge of something inside him that he had not felt in a long, long time, and now. . . . "Why? What, now? Why, Bones? What's going on?"

"Go get dressed, Booth. _Please_."

She began to push at him, so he stood and almost staggered toward his bedroom. "Dressed as in tuxedo dressed?" She definitely was confusing him.

"You still _have_ _that_?"

"No, I just. . . . What are. . . . Are we going somewhere?"

"Casual. Jeans. Sweater." He could see her as he turned. She was standing, beginning to clear the cartons from their Chinese feast. "We're going bowling. I was thinking we could go ice skating, but I don't think I could handle the cold quite yet."

"Bowling?"

"Or a movie." She stood and looked at him, her head angled. "Although I think we should both be up and moving about. And we're taking my car."

"You know you're being bossy."

He watched her for a second longer as she bent to clear the coffee table, then he slipped back into the bedroom.

The kisses lingered on his lips and that crazy, impish grin continued to entrance him even as he slipped on a pair of jeans and pulled on a sweater. He ran a hand over his face and considered shaving.

He stepped out again from the bedroom and surveyed the living room. She'd cleared the boxes and was just picking up the remote to turn off the TV when he caught her in a yawn.

"We could stay in. Especially since you just got back, Bones."

"Late last night, actually. I haven't been to bed." She straightened and pressed the button to turn off the TV. "No. Sweets has said that physical activity is a good counterpoint to what you're going through, the mourning process, Booth. And I'm just suffering from desynchronosis."

"Sweets? Mourning process?" He stepped toward her, a bit worried. "And what did you do? Pick up some bug in Egypt?"

"Jet lag, Booth. Desynchronosis. I haven't slept well. I really need a good night's rest." She did look tired. "Angela said that it takes some people longer to get over a failed love affair. Sweets would say that you were mourning the loss of someone in your life and you may need some time to process everything that has happened."

He couldn't believe this. "What? Is there some sort of party line on my love life? You were talking to Sweets and Angela about me? And you don't even believe in psychology."

"No. . . I. . . Angela called me in Egypt and told me what happened, Booth. She thought I would want to know." She paused and for a moment he feared she was slipping into that annoying pattern in which she seemed to be censoring what she said to him. "She told me that Cam said you were, in Cam's words, 'moping around.' They've been worried about you. I know rejection can be heart crushing, Booth." She tilted her head. "And I do listen to Sweets during our sessions. He can be quite informative at times."

"Besides, _you_ believe in psychology."

He looked at her, really looked at her as he had not in the months he'd been with Carrie. He could read something in her eyes. He was sure he had never seen it there before.

Somehow she was giving a whole new meaning to "the infinite power of possibilities."

"This is what you want, Temperance. _Us_. You want _us_." He had to be sure.

"Yes."

It was simple, emphatic, decisive.

"Do you? Do you still want _us_?"

If there was a hint of hesitation in her question, or a wariness in her tone, he didn't hear it.

He felt hope resurging in him. But he felt something else.

And if anything, she deserved honesty.

"Just, let's just back up. Just stay with me here. What's that thing you've got?"

"Desynchronosis."

"Jet lag. Your time clock is off a bit." She was being incredibly patient although he saw her falter a bit. He couldn't let this moment pass. "My clock's off a bit, Bones. My heart clock. It's metaphorical."

She gave him a single nod.

"I want _us_. I want to be with you, I do. I always have." He stood there more certain of things than he had been for a long time. "But I might need just a little time."

"You loved her." As sure as her simple yes had been, this was equally as sure. She understood. "The metaphorical marks need to fade." Her eyes never left his. "I can wait, Booth. I'm not going anywhere. . . . Well, except bowling."

Suddenly he realized just how incredibly patient she had been. _It was a patience that could be measured in months. _He tried to see her as he once saw her, read her before he had closed the book on her and tried to move onto another chapter of his life. But he had not been reading her heart, not really. He'd been looking in the wrong direction all these months.

"How long? I mean, how long have you known, Bones? About us? That you wanted _us_?"

"Eighteen months. I knew in Maluku."

_Eighteen months? _He'd been walking away from her just at the same time she'd been willing to take a step in his direction.

"Angela says I knew before that, and maybe I did, but," she unfolded her arms and shrugged slightly, "I wasn't ready then, Booth."

"Then I wasn't ready."

She slowly shook her head. "And you're not ready now."

"Don't say that, Bones; _I'm ready_, I just need. . . ."

He stopped the moment he realized she was pointing at his feet clad only in his striped socks. She was grinning, that crazy, impish grin he was just beginning to understand.

He stood for a moment drinking her in. She was taking, for her, an enormous risk. _On them._ At least he could provide some proof—in a purely unscientific mode—that the odds were definitely in her favor. _In their favor._

This time he stepped toward her, sweeping her up in his arms and pressing his lips to hers in a promise of more to come. She gave as good as she got, kissing him back with her own promises unspoken.

And when they came up for air, they simply held each other.

oOo

Years later, many years later, when great grandchildren or grandchildren asked how things began for them, he would be the first to answer. He would look at her for a moment, his dark eyes dancing with mischief, and he would turn to the child who asked and say, "It began with a slap and ended with a kiss."

He liked to start the story that way if only because it always drew a reaction from her.

She would correct him, her hand on his arm, patting him lightly, her voice clear and sure and patient as if she had done this a hundred times. "Technically, it hasn't ended and it's unclear as to which slap you are referring to. Or to whom it was who slapped you. So to be perfectly clear. . . ."

"I was being perfectly clear before you decided to get all squinty on me."

After more than 50 years together, despite both being a bit slower, both a bit more deliberate, it would seem nothing had really changed.

And so he would begin the story again, his hands encasing her hands in his as if to still her ever-active mind, "It began with a slap and ended with a kiss. . . ."


End file.
